Edexcel GCSE Design & Technology

New and emerging technologies are inventions and methods that are only just being adopted, or are still being developed: robotics and automation, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, smart and nanomaterials, and ever cheaper computer-aided design and manufacture. Each changes how products are designed and made, and so changes the businesses that make them and the people who work in them. ## Effects on industry ### Unemployment When a machine can do a repetitive job faster, more accurately and without breaks, a manufacturer has a reason to replace people with it. A car assembly line with welding robots needs far fewer welders than it once did, so jobs in routine, manual work fall. New technology also creates work: someone has to design, build, programme, maintain and sell the machines, so the jobs that appear are usually different from the ones that go. The people who lose a job are often not the people who can fill a new one, which is why unemployment can rise in one town or trade even when the whole economy gains jobs. ### Workforce skill set A workforce that has used the same tools for twenty years does not automatically know how to run a CNC router or write a programme for a robot arm. Employers either retrain their staff or recruit people who already have the skills. Demand therefore rises for technical skills (programming, CAD, electronics, data analysis) and falls for skills that machines have taken over. Retraining costs money and time, and a…