AI and Manufacturing: Key Considerations for Employers

In the manufacturing and engineering sector, the most common forms of AI being used are:

• Collaborative Robots (Cobots): Used to augment the work done by humans that typically requires heavy lifting or on factory assembly lines.
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): software that can automate high-volume repetitious tasks.
• Lights-out Factories: operates as an entirely automated workforce and is run with minimal human interaction.
• Predictive Maintenance (PdM): anticipates servicing needs.

More generally, AI can be used in the workplace for:

• Employee recruitment and onboarding.
• Performance management.
• Managing remote workers.
• Automation of health and safety.

In its Employment Law Briefing, the Government identified several areas of law in place which could be impacted by the use of AI tools:

Trust and Confidence

There is an implied duty of mutual trust and confidence between employees and their employers, and employers are obligated to explain their decisions and justify that they were made in good faith. This could be difficult when an employer has heavily relied on an AI system to make that decision.

Equality Act 2010 

The Equality Act 2010 protects employees from discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of protected characteristics, including sex, religion and race, for example. When programming AI, employers will need to ensure that such tools do not exhibit bias to avoid discrimination claims.

Data Protection

The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 place various restrictions on data collection and processing. For example, Article 22(1) of UK GDPR sets out that:

“data subjects shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her”.

The Information Commissioners Office has published its own guidance, which contains advice on how to interpret data protection law as it applies to AI systems and general best practices for data protection-compliant AI.

Employment Rights Act 1996 

Under the Employment Rights Act 1996, any employee with over two years of continuous service has the right not to be unfairly dismissed, including in unfair redundancy processes where the role may have been subsumed by AI.