Being someone who actually works in manufacturing automation, I completely disagree that it doesn’t increase efficiency or quantity of production. It absolutely does both of those things. It has to be part of a larger ergonomic line process improvements though, automation on it’s own is just a tool on the line. In many cases where management wants to use automation, more efficiency can be found in things like better, more obvious tool layouts, or better peripheral order scheduling.

As for quality? Kinda, process understanding and replication is by far the largest determinate of quality, which automation can improve, but only with regular maintenance which most companies are loathe to do properly.

What automation mostly does is ‘reduce’ the level of skill required by floor operators to create a product) even though operators generally have to learn to work with and around the ghosts in the machine), allowing for management to justify not giving out pay raises to them. Same as it ever was for any Tayloristic endeavor.