Improving Manufacturing through the Automation of Report Generation; The Automation of Business Processes and its Effect on Overall Business Structure and the Hiring Process

During the Summer of 2023, I took part in a 10-week internship opportunity at Titan Display. I worked creating an application that would automate the process of generating reports.
Automation is becoming highly proficient, and for this reason, many people have started worrying more about how automation will affect them and their livelihood. Although automation brings efficiency and effectiveness to an engineering environment, it is expected that automation will bring its share of harm to people and society. Because of my internship experience, I chose to highlight the impact automation has had on businesses. The research problem I look to answer is how does the automation of business processes affect overall business structure and the hiring process? To address this question, I have elected to use Hughes (1987) theory of technological momentum. I expect to find that automation has caused companies to hire fewer laborers in mundane fields that can be done via automation and has hired more skilled laborers that are capable of maintaining and expanding the automation process. This calls to question whether the automation which leads to more efficient work is ethically correct if it leaves many laborers without jobs.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Technical Advisor: Rider Foley

STS Advisor: Brynn Seabrook