It should come as no surprise the Scots family of one of the world’s leading lights in literature also created many of our best known lighthouses.
For more than 150 years, generations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s kin battled stormy seas to build Scotland’s finest beacons.
Fast forward and today many still shine brightly – but its lighthouse factories that look set to become a signal of hope, not impending danger, for Scotland’s production and manufacturing industry.
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The concept comes after the World Economic Forum (WEF) vetted 1000 manufacturers and chose what it calls lighthouse examples.
These are advanced factories found in companies large and small and in all industries. Rather than replacing production operators with AI and machines in lighthouses, work is transformed to make it less mundane and repetitive; instead the focus is on being diversified and productive.
Operators in lighthouses focus on tasks where their human decision-making skills and adaptability to new situations can bring more value than machines.
According to WEF, this makes these factories flexible and able to weather dips in the economy through super-quick shop-floor innovation and effective use of so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies.
This certainly chimes with the production and manufacturing sector in Scotland, which has already embraced vast technological changes as more industries tune into the power of the digital age – without ditching the human input.
And just as the production line has evolved, so too has the role of the operator.
Land one of the production operator roles on s1jobs and you’ll find the role likely embraces a whole new world beyond the production line itself.
Today’s operators are expected to manage production methods and strategies.
They also get the chance to be at the forefront of some of the most exciting production and manufacturing technologies around – that Fourth Industrial Revolution tech.
From specialist tools such as 3-D printers to CO2 lasers, production operators are hands on in a brave new world of magnificent machinery.
And if you thought being an operator was a solitary role, think again. Creatively minded teams are where manufacturing projects come to life.
Such joined-up thinking reflects the aim of the WEF initiative, which is to build a network of lighthouses across the globe. This way it will be able to pinpoint shared challenges for manufacturing businesses – and, of course, soon-to-be-shared solutions.
It’s all about lighthouse companies showcasing what works now and what will work even better in the years ahead.
If you’d like to shape your own future, let s1jobs shine its own light on the latest Production and Manufacturing vacancies available today.