&gt; Humans in advanced production lines are &quot;actuators&quot;. They are not there to think, but to replace an hypothetical machine that it&#x27;s not possible to build yet. We have those magical machines in software, we call them compilers, interpreters, operative systems, file systems, etc.<p>Unfortunately this view of people that work in manufacturing is pervasive, but it is also incredibly naive. That view is essentially the reason why American car companies (along with many other industries) got their clocks cleaned by the Japanese car companies over the last 3 decades. I&#x27;ve been involved in a lot of companies where we worked really hard to correct that mentality and the results were always obviously positive, but incredibly difficult to achieve. Engineers just love to look down their noses at everyone else.<p>There is nothing worse than some new kid that just graduated with a BS in engineering pretending like he&#x27;s smarter than a guy that has been building the product we&#x27;re designing for 30 years. Unfortunately some people never grow beyond the &#x27;new kid&#x27; stage.