AI exposure: Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders
Operate or tend bonding machines that use adhesives to join items for further processing or to form a completed product. Processes include joining veneer sheets into plywood; gluing paper; or joining rubber and rubberized fabric parts, plastic, simulated leather, or other materials.
Reading this score
computedAt 20.7% of weighted task load, Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders sits at the 37th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 68.0% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 16 tasks it averages 2.51 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Maintain production records such as quantities, dimensions, and thicknesses of materials..., at 73.3%. The least is Measure and mix ingredients to prepare glue, at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within production occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 107 roles in the group is 16.1%, and only 24 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 16 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 10 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.14 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.51 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.46 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.48 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.01 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.75 | 0-3 |
Task by task
16 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maintain production records such as quantities, dimensions, and thicknesses of materials processed. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.19 | exposed |
| Read work orders and communicate with coworkers to determine machine and equipment settings and adjustments and supply and product specifications. | 47.4% | 19.3% | 33.3% | 4.34 | exposed |
| Observe gauges, meters, and control panels to obtain information about equipment temperatures and pressures, or the speed of feeders or conveyors. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.19 | exposed |
| Monitor machine operations to detect malfunctions and report or resolve problems. | 35.4% | 27.1% | 37.5% | 4.54 | exposed |
| Adjust machine components according to specifications such as widths, lengths, and thickness of materials and amounts of glue, cement, or adhesive required. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 4.55 | exposed |
| Start machines, and turn valves or move controls to feed, admit, apply, or transfer materials and adhesives, and to adjust temperature, pressure, and time settings. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 4.50 | exposed |
| Perform test production runs and make adjustments as necessary to ensure that completed products meet standards and specifications. | 11.7% | 13.3% | 75.0% | 4.41 | untouched |
| Transport materials, supplies, and finished products between storage and work areas, using forklifts. | 8.3% | 4.2% | 87.5% | 3.85 | untouched |
| Clean and maintain gluing and cementing machines, using solutions, lubricants, brushes, and scrapers. | 6.7% | 5.8% | 87.5% | 4.08 | untouched |
| Align and position materials being joined to ensure accurate application of adhesive or heat sealing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.59 | untouched |
| Fill machines with glue, cement, or adhesives. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.46 | untouched |
| Examine and measure completed materials or products to verify conformance to specifications, using measuring devices such as tape measures, gauges, or calipers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.35 | untouched |
| Remove and stack completed materials or products, and restock materials to be joined. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Remove jammed materials from machines and readjust components as necessary to resume normal operations. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.19 | untouched |
| Mount or load material such as paper, plastic, wood, or rubber in feeding mechanisms of cementing or gluing machines. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Measure and mix ingredients to prepare glue. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.04 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.