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Ford can't hire techs cuz they don't pay shit. No robot with any amount of ai nonsense in it will ever be remotely capable of replacing a mechanic. When is it ok to get the acetylene torch out? How does the bolt FEEL as you undo it, is it about to snap? Do u need to pump heat into it and feed it some wax? Did you spill brake fluid on the customers paint? Was the customer concern duplicated before determining what the repair was? Who did the diagnostic work? Was it test driven and quality checked afterward? Was the customer made aware of any other potential issues down the road? Ai and robots may be able to help in menial and manufacturing tasks but would never be capable of repair in automotive, especially not anywhere rust is common !
It's always okay to get the torch out.
And a robot can sense a bolt about to snap, because it can measure the amount of force being used. If that exceeds the force it's supposed to take, before you reach the breaking point, then it's time for heat and wax.
But you're right on the rest. A robot can't account for a bolt so rusty that it's lost its edges and become one with the frame. Or some weird ass modifications the last owner made.
Jim Farley recently did a town hall or something similar and all the mechanics on the internet ask him to come into the shops and see what the work is actually like. He didn't address the low pay etc. Just pay the techs more and they'll come. A good tech needs to know air conditioning , electrical, networking amongst other stuff and they still get paid shit. Chrysler has an airbag recall listed at. 1.4hr, but it takes about 2hrs of fast paced work as an example.
Here's Mr Subaru
https://youtu.be/3kEN6tAe-eg
Flat rate encourages bad behaviour and has ruined the automotive field for both consumers and workers, the only winners are the owners fucking us both!
Ah yes, management led time studies. The bane of my career as an industrial engineer. Sure I could lie and tell you it thinks it'll take as long as you feel it could or what the original MOST says, but then we'd both be wrong and the workers are still either running over or skipping shit and have more turnover than a washing machine. Or we could talk to the worker, track how long it actually takes a regular worker at a reasonable pace, see if anything is impeding their ability to do what needs done, then tell the budget people the actual price to do the task.
No, management does not like me.
Without having looked at your link, because I'm on the train without headphones and don't want to be that guy:
You can compensate for a lot by paying people a good, stable salary. Light knows I'm tolerating some bullshit just because a permanent full-time job in a stable industry with alright pay and a strong union and workers' council is a welcome reprieve in an unstable time. Sure, I can't be as flexible with HO as I'd like, but at least I can make a living and support my wife without stressing out about suddenly getting a lot of time at home without office.
But even money can only do so much. Working conditions, realistic expectations, getting and heeding feedback from the people doing the actual work also matter. It's perpetually confusing to see top management be so neglectful in their treatment of "human resources", because even that dehumanising phrasing implies they're resources that ought to be maintained.
The human dingus will still put your drain plug back on with the biggest Milwaukee impact in the toolbox 🤭
Or just forget about it. I've known multiple people who had an engine ruined because of that.
I have had to replace a land rover engine to the tune of about 38k$ after a dingus at a chain oil shop drained the transmission then dumped another 6 quarts of oil into the sump. The diesel ran away from being overfilled till it windowed the block with a rod. Nothing is idiot proof! That's why u go go shops that care instead of the cheapest available place, you get what you pay for!
It's why I do 99% of my own work on my cars.
As you should, your mechanics aren't typically paid to give a shit! Do everything you can on your own I bet you paid for most of ur tools and still saved money on the first 3 things u did if u count what you'd have paid in labor. That and it's good to know ur way around what's likely one of the most valuable assets you own that sees daily use. Being useless is a luxury for the rich!
That is exactly what all the factory line workers said in the eighties.
Repetitive factory assembly of one vehicle and automotive repair share just about nothing besides that a vehicle is involved in both. This is like saying a robot could replace a tailor because robots make clothes in factories, this is something that only makes sense if you don't know anything about either lol.
I've written before about this, but it's very unlikely that Ford (the OEM/manufacturer) has this many auto technicians (people that perform car repairs using existing tooling and documentation).
Most likely, these positions are for Mechanical Engineers or similar. These would be people doing R&D, analyzing failure trends, etc. They would not be the ones working in the service department of your local Ford dealership, because those people are employees of the dealership and not Ford.
Well the article clearly states Ford is complaining that he cannot fill 5,000 mechanic positions so I figured he's talking about mechanics, especially since he's been in the news for the last 3+ months crying about these high paying tech positions that don't exist LOL. The ad may say u can make 100j a year but that's only possible if you make more than 40 hours a week on flat rate, so these job ads are misleading. Sure if you get nothing but gravy work because your buddies with the service advisor you can make that money, but fuck up with the shop politics or get a rash of shit jobs and a slow month and your not making what they advertise.
In a previous article, they also said there's no training program for mechanics. This tells me that either they aren't talking about auto technicians, or they're full of shit.
A robot can perfectly fine replace a mechanic if you redesign the car entirely to be machine serviceble and then also build a service center around that.
It would just cost more money to do it that way then how we currently do it. By a fuck load.
True that, but then that service shop could only work on vehicles that are designed to be compatible with that service center. It honestly wouldnt surprise me to see that sort of thing in a few decades for day some Tesla nonsense that they don't want mechanics touching anyways.