Automation
Topic: Secondary Activities: Manufacturing and Industrial Location · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 5 "Secondary Activities"
Meaning
Automation is the most advanced stage of mechanisation. Production runs without people having to think or decide at each step. Machines are controlled by computers that use feedback: they check their own output and correct themselves in a closed loop, so the machines seem to "think". Automatic factories built this way have grown up all over the world. Automation raises output and accuracy, but it reduces the number of workers needed. This is why cheap labour matters less in deciding where industries locate.
Example
In a modern car factory, computer-controlled robots weld and paint car bodies. Sensors check each joint and adjust the robots without a human worker stepping in.
Don't confuse with
- Mechanisation: simply using machines and gadgets to do tasks, with people still operating and controlling them. Automation is its advanced stage, where computers do the controlling.
Related concepts
- Craft method of production
- Mass production
- Assembly line
- Mechanisation
- Division of labour
- Uneven distribution of manufacturing