What's involved in factory work?

Question

In this day and age, where machines are used rather than people to screw tops on bottles etc, what sort of things do people doing factory work have to do? Is there still lots of repetitive manual labour involved or is that no longer the case?

It's actually a research question for a script I'm writing, not myself! I need to know what sort of dull, monotonous tasks someone might be doing for 8 hours a day (rather than watching a machine do).

Answer 1

It depends on what kind of things the factory produces. In my case, I work in a factory that produced plastic automotive parts. This includes, but not limited to, body side moldings on a car, wheel flares for pickup trucks, and license plate garnishes. There are 3 shifts, Midnights, Days, and Afternoons, all of which are 8 hours long. Sometimes a plastic injection molding machine may run manually (where the operator has to open the door and remove the part from the press and then close the door), or on automatic, where a robot drops in the press and pulls the part out for you. The latter is a little bit less work, but it all depends on what needs to be done to the part after its out of the machine. For example, some parts may come out with pitting, or excessive flash in some areas which need to be trimmed, or sanded down with sandpaper or scotch brite. Some of the moulds may have tool damage and cause more for the operator to do in terms of "polishing" up the part (like torching the edges of a part to burn off the flash, then wiping it with a special cloth) before it gets approved to be shipped out. Some parts come out and are fairly heavy or hot and so gloves and other protective gear should be worn. There is still a lot of repetitive work, sometimes I feel like I am working out my hands. You could be trimming the gate off the part, or using an exacto knife an scraping out the chatter on a part that was caused by the automatic or manual cutters. Most of these jobs move very quickly and you are expected to do 100% inspection (check for sinks on the surface of the part, check for scratches, splay, flowlines, etc. on all parts that you produce, but Quality Control Technicians also come around one in a while to make sure you aren't passing a bunch of bad parts. Also in this job, you have to sometimes make your own boxes, bag your own parts, complete your paperwork hourly, and fill in your own labels. Some jobs that have more trimming and polishing up to do on the part makes your 8 hours shift fly by, whereas other slower jobs are very boring. Currently, temporary workers in my plant make 11-12 dollars Canadian an hour, and as they get hired on permanently, they go up from 13-17 Canadian dollars an hour.

I haven't included the work from assembly plants, where they take our parts and may have to put knobs, buttons, or tape on the parts before shipping. The tape is for the purpose of preventing water getting on certain areas of the part since it will be powerwashed, then sent to the paint plant for painting, if necessary. Sometimes even in our plant we have to weld a smaller part to a bigger part.

Overall, it is a fairly easy job, but very physically demanding, and yes, I always have aches in different areas of my body from the repetitive work. :)

Here's what I did on Friday...

Afternoon Shift- 2:45pm until 11pm
Signed in,
Checked the line up schedule to see which press I was assigned to (I was assigned to a press where we produced parts for the Saturn Ion, Vue),
Grabbed the appropriate paperwork,
Filled out the appropriate paperwork,
Asked the last shift how the parts had been running all day, if there were any problems or any downtime,
Read the Visual Display Board on instructions on how to run the press and "polish" the part, and also read any Quality Alerts regarding any quality issues with the part,
Took over the Day Shift Operator at the sound of the hourly buzzer,
Put on a double pair of knit gloves only on one hand...kept the other hand ungloved so I could feel the part for any defects,
Waited until the Operator at the Gate to separate the part from the gate, trim the excess off so that the edge where the gate once was is flush with the part....wait for them to sand the part with a power sander, scribe the date and shift with an exacto knife on the backside of the part, trim everything else with a swivel knife, then they hand the part to me.

I took the part, placed it on the cutter, pulled the air clamp forward, so that the suction cups on the cutter pulls the part towards it, pull two more clamps down to secure the part in the cutter, and very carefully and slowly, pull the handle sideways to cut /trim the part. Pupose is to trim off the area so the parting line is not showing.

Sand the part with a hand sander where necessary, around the corners, etc, and use an exacto knife and scrape out any chatter left by the cutter, check for any defects, then bag the part and put it in the bin.

This is repeated for 8 hours until the end of my shift, where I then cleana nd sweep up and finish my paperwork and head home.

Answer 2

I work in a car factory, we make some awesome little cars that are a great success globally. There is a very big reliance on heavy, manual repetitive labour. The work is very hard and you have to be strong, nimble, highly dexterous and very quick. If you are not lifting something heavy 300 times a shift and placing it with precision in the car , you will be fitting a hard to believe number of things in the small amount of time allotted for your task. You will start as a temp. and if you cannot learn your job in a few hours they put you on another, if you cannot get up to speed after they have tried you on three jobs..its out of the door for you !
The shifts are soul destroying, 2 weeks on earlies, 2 weeks on nights, so that change over from nights on a saturday morning to going to work on earlies on the following monday is terrible and probably dangerous as everyone is tired from lack of sleep. It is proven that life expectency for shift workers is a lot less than that for workers on normal day jobs, but who cares eh ? I understand that shifts are used as a control mechanism, it keeps you tired and tired people do not have the energy to complain too much. Also there are people from maybe 40 different countries working there, they will work for 2 maybe 3 years and then go back to Croatia, Ethiopia, Nigeria or wherever and live in some style, us Brits have to work there for 20 years in the same conditions and we cannot earn enough to get a decent living here.
I have no feelings of ambivelence towards these men and women, they are brave and good souls who come here to improve their lives, any person who moves thousands of miles from home to improve their lives and the lives of their families is a bit of a hero in my book.
Immigrant labour is used by global industrialists to keep production costs down and profits up, they care not one jot for the workers, wherever they may be from.



It is like being back in the 19th century.

Answer 3

Yes! Most of factory type jobs are Repetitive manual labor. Unless you are a supervisor or something along those lines. I have worked in like 10 different factories. Basically you are given 1 objective and you do that same objective as many times as you can in 8 or 10 hour shifts.

Answer 4

Take a summer job in a factory in your school / university holidays. It's a good experience, and the money is surprisingly good.

Just remember to bring your long-weight, sky hooks, tartan paint and left-handed screwdriver with you on your first day.

Answer 5

Someone working on a factory floor these days is just watching the machinery to make sure it does what it is supposed to and not reck the product coming out of the factory.

Answer 6

Lifting things mainly.

Answer 7

yes theres still LOTS of manual work being done ...I used to work for HERSHEY in Nova Scotia and altho its not hard work - it is sometimes quite time consuming.

Answer 8

yeah you gotta lift heavy stuff and show ya a**e crack its the code of labour and you gotta be as dumb as ever to work in a factory lol its like one of the easiest jobs ever

Answer 9

Yeah its hard low paid boring slog.

Answer 10

go to college, you don't want to find out!