ABSTRACT
The automotive industry is a good example of an industry that has seen signicant changes as a result of introducing automation in the manufacturing process. It is well known that the rst car automotive plants were labor intensive and created a large number of jobs in the communities in which they were located. The introduction of automation into this industry proved controversial. Whilst leading to substantial cost savings in the manufacturing process, there was also a social cost with many people who had previously undertaken these manual, labor-intensive processes nding that their jobs had been replaced by machines. Despite the controversial nature of the development, it is clear that the introduction of automation has brought substantial benets to both consumers and manufacturers-the most obvious being the reliability in product provided by the ability to manufacture to a repeatable, quality controlled process.
