What Is a Dark Factory? Inside the Factories That Never Sleep!

yourstory ^ | 02 27 2025 | Nucleus_AI

[yesthatjallen]

The rise of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed industries worldwide, and manufacturing is no exception. One of the most significant shifts in recent years is the concept of dark factories—automated manufacturing facilities that require little to no human intervention. But are these factories the future of industrial production, or do they pose challenges that outweigh their benefits? This article explores the rise of dark factories, their advantages, drawbacks, and how companies are implementing them globally.

What Are Dark Factories?

A dark factory, also known as a lights-out factory, is a fully automated facility where robots, AI-driven systems, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices handle all production processes. These factories are designed to operate 24/7 without human intervention, making traditional labor-intensive processes obsolete. Since no workers are needed on-site, these facilities do not require lighting—hence the term “dark factory.”

SNIP

[Leaning Right]

> If labor is no issue then why not here? <

Here: Higher taxes. Burdensome regulations at the federal, state, and local levels. Exposure to crazy lawsuits of all sorts.

Yesterday’s America: Build your factory. Get ‘er done.

Today’s America: Wait years for all the proper permits. Meanwhile your overseas competition is cornering the market.

The solution is not to surrender our industrial base to China, etc. The solution is to relax those burdensome government regulations, plus add tariffs.

And that’s exactly what Trump means to do.

[EnderWiggin1970]

As others have pointed out this is a good way for America to overcome labor cost issues in competition with low-wage countries. A true zero-human factory may never be a reality, but we can keep incrementally taking steps in this direction.

In the electronics factory where I spent most of my career the workers on the floor weren't interacting much with the parts being built. It was more a case of supporting the machines - reloading reels of components, doing daily and weekly maintenance, checking settings and updating them for different product mixes and so on. Inspections that were manual early in my career were all automated (and much more reliable) by the end, and end of line assembly processes were steadily more automated. I could see the human handling that was still done for end of line testing being eliminated with a bit of fixturing and robotics.

Technicians would still be needed to support all this, and to do the awkward and involved maintenance and repair activities that are required to keep everything running. But we are reaching a stage where any kind of repetitive motion a human can make in a manufacturing process, can be replicated with robotics.