Following our recent article on why we should be embracing Artificial Intelligence in the workplace, I thought it would be beneficial to discuss how automation and AI will affect factories and food manufacturing jobs.

For most people, it’s a terrifying thought to imagine that someday robots may take over your job, and to a certain extent, it’s quite possible. But it’s not as bad as you may think… here’s why.

As roles disappear, new opportunities appear

Roles such as packing and loading have quite a high chance of being automated, but at the same time having machinery running nonstop isn’t plain sailing either and therefore needs to be maintained. In eliminating these kinds of jobs, it also opens up a window for a variety of other jobs to be introduced in the engineering, maintenance, data analysing and programming fields. This means that rather than jobs being lost, the workforce will adapt to fill diverse roles and even some previously non-existent roles.

Weighing in from a business perspective, automation is seen as the way forward to increase efficiency and accuracy and remove any chance of human error. This means business can grow which can only be good for the economy, and creating more job opportunities.

To conclude, this is an opportunity to move forward and take advantage of new technology to help business and employees reach the next level.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear your opinion on this, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn to share your thoughts.

Jessica Lamplough

FMCG Recruitment Lead - First Recruitment Group
Jess works in a 360 recruitment role in First Recruitment Group’s FMCG division. Her experience has been predominantly in permanent recruitment focusing specifically within the food manufacturing market, with clients that produce chilled, short shelf life products.