Jim,
That video looked too much like my work. Unfortunately, Kenwood does not seem to be using any of my machines for the pick-and-place. The hand placement of thru-hole components is still common. I have been working with a new machine that is designed to do that kind of odd form parts placement. It is rather amazing what can be done with machine vision and a scrubbing motion to insert parts. A lot of the plants are telling us that hand placement is becoming a liability in terms of mistakes, repeatability, cycle time and staffing.
We also have a 3D x-ray automated inspection machine that could do the manual BGA inspection shown in the video. There is significant market pressure to automate that step.
The people that build cars and handsets are still doing real hardware every day and most are doing it 3 shifts a day. There are still a lot of shops doing assembly here in the US. The clothing, slippers and a lot of other things are very familiar to me from my Japan visits and my Japanese managed customers here in the US and Mexico.
Lately, I've been wanting to get away from the physical hardware part of my work. Working on a noisy and busy shop floor isn't as interesting as it used to be. It's still cool to see things created from bits, pieces and data. It's just a messy noisy process.