With regard to the assembly of mobile phones (South Korea), a production manager
stated that automation becomes a bottleneck when the variety of mobile phone
models in production increases. Accordingly, the company had reverted back to the
use of human operatives and jigs in its assembly operations because the number of
different products it assembled per day had increased. Companies making home
electronics, desktop manufacturing equipment, actuators, and values, were all found
to be making extensive use of human-manual skills (Japan). Fine motor skills are
particularly important in these companies.