Smooth garments with irons, presses, or steamers
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 3 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Controlling Machines and Processes (4.A.3.a.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 3 occupations that perform it.
- Iron or press articles, fabrics, and furs, using hand irons or pressing machines.
- Operate steam, hydraulic, or other pressing machines to remove wrinkles from garments and flatwork items, or to shape, form, or patch articles.
- Press garments, using hand irons or pressing machines.
- Lower irons, rams, or pressing heads of machines into position over material to be pressed.
- Slide material back and forth over heated, metal, ball-shaped forms to smooth and press portions of garments that cannot be satisfactorily pressed with flat pressers or hand irons.
- Push and pull irons over surfaces of articles to smooth or shape them.
- Finish pleated garments, determining sizes of pleats from evidence of old pleats or from work orders, using machine presses or hand irons.
- Finish pants, jackets, shirts, skirts and other dry-cleaned and laundered articles, using hand irons.
- Finish fancy garments such as evening gowns and costumes, using hand irons to produce high quality finishes.
- Press ties on small pressing machines.
- Finish velvet garments by steaming them on bucks of hot-head presses or steam tables, and brushing pile (nap) with handbrushes.
- Insert heated metal forms into ties and touch up rough places with hand irons.
- Measure fabric to specifications, cut uneven edges with shears, fold material, and press it with an iron to form a heading.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
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.
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
3 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Operate industrial processing or production equipment”. 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.