Select tools, equipment, or technologies for use in operations or projects
Little of this can be handed to software today.
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Judgment, authorisation and strategy |
| Jobs that do it | 13 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Models and routing |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 13 occupations that perform it.
- Select aerial photographic and remote sensing techniques and plotting equipment needed to meet required standards of accuracy.
- Design or select equipment for use in wastewater processing to ensure compliance with government standards.
- Select or install combined heat units, power units, cogeneration equipment, or trigeneration equipment that reduces energy use or pollution.
- Select locations and plan underground or surface mining operations, specifying processes, labor usage, and equipment that will result in safe, economical, and environmentally sound extraction of minerals and ores.
- Research, select, or apply sensors, communication technologies, or control devices for motion control, position sensing, pressure sensing, or electronic communication.
- Identify, procure, or develop test equipment, instrumentation, or facilities for characterization of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) applications.
- Select, purchase, set up, operate, or troubleshoot state-of-the-art laser cutting equipment.
- Select drill size to drill test head, according to test design and specifications, and submit guide layout to designated department.
- Select electronics equipment, components, or systems to meet functional specifications.
- Select, calibrate, or operate equipment used in the non-destructive testing of products or materials.
- Dress with equipment such as fire-resistant clothing and breathing apparatus.
- Examine blast areas to determine amounts and kinds of explosive charges needed and to ensure that safety laws are observed.
- Use handtools, such as screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, pressure gauges, or precision instruments, as well as power tools, such as pneumatic wrenches, lathes, welding equipment, or jacks and hoists.
- Select or devise materials-handling methods and equipment to transport ore, waste materials, and mineral products efficiently and economically.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for judgment, authorisation and strategy, and what it costs.
There is nothing here worth buying beyond a good assistant. Software assembles the case and recommends an answer, which any $20 assistant already does; the decision is yours, and no product on this page changes that.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
13 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists
- Cartographers and Photogrammetrists
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Electrical and Electronics Drafters
- Explosives Workers, Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters
- Firefighters
- Mechanical Engineers
- Mechatronics Engineers
- Microsystems Engineers
- Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers
- Non-Destructive Testing Specialists
- Photonics Engineers
- Water/Wastewater Engineers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Select materials or equipment for operations or projects”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.