Back when my insomnia was really bad, I'd be up most of the night watching generally dull television. One of the most interesting shows was "How It's Made", which is an entirely narrated view following a camera through various production facilities for common(ish) products.

http://science.discovery.com/tv/how-its-made/ and https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/How_It%27s_Ma...

Most of the production is heavily automated, but there are always a few humans in the loop somewhere. In a lot of cases, it is exclusively loading the machine with some odd-shaped component, again and again as fast as they can.

Sometimes there's a bit of excitement (poorly designed safety guards or practices), just waiting to trip someone up after they zone out midway through their 12-hour shift.

I don't know what the failure figures would be like, but it's quite possible you do need that engineer on call, with his lateral-thinking brain and dexterous monkey-fingers, but otherwise, robots can do the lot, it's just a question of cost.

See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lights_out_%2... for examples.