Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders

Operate or tend machines to prepare industrial or consumer products for storage or shipment. Includes cannery workers who pack food products.

The occupation "Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders" has an automation risk of 61.8%, very close to its base risk of 62.5%. This relatively high percentage is mainly due to the repetitive and predictable nature of many core tasks within the role. In a typical workday, these operators are tasked with monitoring and maintaining packaging equipment, tasks that are conducive to automation with today’s technologies. As industrial robotics and smart manufacturing systems advance, the potential for machines to handle these duties continues to grow—thus increasing automability. However, the risk is not absolute, as some specific tasks resist easy automation even in developed settings. Among the most automatable aspects of this occupation are tasks that are largely repetitive and involve decision-making based on clear, quantifiable standards. For example, attaching identification labels or stenciling information on containers is a routine task that robots can be programmed to do with high precision. Similarly, sorting, grading, weighing, and inspecting products to ensure they meet certain specifications can be performed efficiently by machine vision and sensor technologies. Another highly automatable process is responding to machine malfunctions by stopping or resetting equipment and reporting issues, as smart sensors and control systems can increasingly diagnose, resolve, and log common malfunctions with minimal human intervention. The predictability and structured nature of these tasks make them prime candidates for automation. Despite these trends, several activities within the occupation present resistance to full automation. Cleaning or removing damaged or inferior materials to prepare raw products, for example, can involve nuanced judgment and dexterity that current robotic systems struggle to replicate reliably. Securing finished packages by hand—whether tying, sewing, gluing, or stapling—often requires adaptive hand-eye coordination and tactile feedback, especially given variable item sizes and packaging types. Additionally, preparing containers by cleaning, lining, or padding them, and assembling cartons for packing, can be irregular and require human assessment and assembly skills. These resistant tasks are tied to "bottleneck skills" such as originality, measured at 2.1% and 2.3%, which are notably low for this occupation, underscoring that while the role demands some creative or complex problem-solving, such demands are sporadic rather than central to the work. Thus, while automation will likely continue to replace many repetitive elements, complete automation is constrained by these physical and cognitive demands.