For most of human existence, people have made things. You can trace back a history of items made by hand all the way back to cavemen. Rudimentary tools were made, which by today’s standards would barely even resemble tools. Tools were crafted from stone, bone, and wood, and were used for various purposes. As years went by the crafting of tools become easier and more efficient. An example of an early handmade tool would be an arrowhead. The products made by people served a purpose, but their performance and durability were lacking. As time went by people needed to create better and more efficient systems and means to construct tools and products. The industrial revolution gave us our first assembly machines, and now they’re almost ubiquitous throughout commercial industries. This ranges from tools to housewares products. The creation of assembly machines has done amazing things for the quality of products that are used today. There are two really good reasons why machine assembly is better than hand creations.
1) Shortened productions: There is no human on this planet that can assemble things faster than a machine, both in terms of how much work can be done without stopping and the amount of work done within that time. Machines don’t need lunch breaks or to go home to their family after a hard day at work; however, people do. When machines are running at peak performance you can get substantially more work done than if you were using human workers.
2) Quality of products: When you make something by hand you are subject to human error. There is the expression in making things: “measure twice and cut once.” What if you still don’t measure what you are making correctly? There are great deals of factors that can allow for human workers to produce subpar work. Once an assembly machine is created and calibrated, it will create the same product over and over without fail. If you are looking to have a solid consistency of high quality products then you might want to consider machine assembly.
People make incredible products by hand, such as snowboards or guitars; however, there are downsides to making products like this. There is a debate raging between the benefits and virtues of mechanical and hand assembly, and there are pros and cons for each. Look at what you are producing and try to make the best decision.
