{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/first-line-supervisors-of-production-and-operating-workers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers",
    "soc_code": "51-1011",
    "category": "Production",
    "us_employment": 673430,
    "median_annual_wage": 74450
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 56,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 12,
    "embodiment": 16,
    "liability_shield": 4,
    "trust_premium": 11,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Roughly half the shift is generating documents an MES already holds the data for — crew assignments, hourly production counts, scrap and downtime coding, OEE summaries, corrective-action forms — and that half is automatable now; the 12 rather than 8 comes from the tasks that require you to physically be at the press when it starts throwing flash, and to decide in thirty seconds whether to run it or lock it out.",
    "embodiment": "You spend the shift walking the floor in PPE, putting hands on a jammed conveyor, standing over a new operator's setup to correct their grip on the fixture, and doing your own eyes-on verification of first-piece quality — the 16 rather than 20 reflects that a growing share of the job is done from a terminal in the shift office.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no licence to supervise production; a plant can promote a senior operator into your job on a Monday, and when an out-of-spec lot ships the exposure lands on the company and the quality system, not on your personal credential — forklift, lockout/tagout, or OSHA 30 cards are internal requirements, not statutory gatekeepers.",
    "trust_premium": "An 11 is earned by the fact that your crew's willingness to stay for the overtime, flag a problem early instead of hiding it, or come in at 5am when someone else called out runs on personal credibility built over years on that floor — but it stops short of 13 because the relationship is with employees who can be reassigned to another supervisor, not with a customer who chose you.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You make calls with real money and real bodies attached — stop the line or run to end of shift, put a marginal operator on the critical machine, judge whether a borderline dimension gets a deviation or gets scrapped — and you own the outcome at the Monday review; the 13 rather than 16 reflects that specs, SOPs, and a quality manager constrain most of those decisions before you reach them."
  },
  "rationale": "The paperwork half of this job — shift schedules, production reports, downtime logs, quality paperwork, performance write-ups, staffing forecasts — is squarely in reach of current AI plus MES/ERP automation, and many plants already push those tasks into software. The other half is standing on a line, reading a machine that sounds wrong, redeploying people when someone calls out at 5am, coaching a new operator's hands, and taking the hit when a lot ships out of spec; none of that is automatable today. The modal worker is a shop-floor supervisor of 10–30 operators, and the likely outcome is fewer supervisors covering wider spans with AI-generated schedules and reports.",
  "outlook": "Supervisor headcount thins as scheduling and reporting move into software and spans of control widen, but every running plant still needs a person on the floor who can redeploy a crew, stop a bad lot, and answer for safety.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Extension of existing named-person sign-off regimes into general manufacturing: FDA 21 CFR 211.100/211.188 already requires a qualified person to review and sign batch production records, FSMA requires a named PCQI to sign corrective-action and verification records, and OSHA PSM (1910.119) requires certification of operating procedures by a qualified person. If OSHA's long-pending update to the PSM standard, or state food/cannabis/battery-plant rules, adds an explicit requirement that a named shift supervisor personally certify AI-generated deviation dispositions, lockout/tagout authorizations, or line-release decisions — and that the certification cannot be executed by software — the shield moves from a soft norm to a personal one.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Automated-decision employment law reaching shop-floor discipline: NYC Local Law 144 and Illinois' AI Video Interview Act cover hiring; California's CRD automated-decision rules (effective Oct 2025) and proposed state bills reach broader employment decisions. A rule or arbitration line holding that write-ups, attendance terminations, or productivity-based discipline generated from MES/labor-tracking data require a named human supervisor as the accountable decision-maker (and expose that supervisor's judgment to just-cause review) makes the human signature legally load-bearing.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Pure task-mix shift, no law needed: this job genuinely has two tiers. If MES/ERP plus LLM layers absorb scheduling, downtime coding, shift reports, quality paperwork and staffing forecasts, the residual role is the non-automatable tier — 5am redeployment under absenteeism, hands-on coaching of new operators, diagnosing a machine that sounds wrong, and owning the scrap call. The measured share of the day that AI cannot do at usable quality rises even as headcount falls. Watch for job postings that drop 'reporting' language and add 'coaching, troubleshooting, span of 40+'.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formalization of stop-work authority in the supervisor role: customer-driven quality standards (IATF 16949 clause 10.2 on customer complaints, AS9100 on escapes) and post-incident consent decrees increasingly name a specific on-shift authority for line stoppage and containment. If plant quality manuals or union safety agreements (e.g. UAW/USW health-and-safety language) designate the first-line supervisor as the sole holder of stop-work and product-hold authority, with that decision auditable to them personally, the consequential-call ownership hardens rather than diffusing into a central control room.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Customer- and insurer-driven presence requirements: aerospace, medical-device and pharma customers already write supervised-shift and named-contact clauses into supply agreements, and property/casualty insurers underwriting high-hazard lines can require documented supervisory coverage per shift as a condition of premium. If audit protocols or insurance riders specify a qualified human supervisor physically present per shift per line, buyers are effectively paying for the human. This is a narrow, sector-specific route and does not generalize to commodity contract manufacturing.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Embodiment is already near its practical maximum at 16 and has no upward route; if anything, lights-out cells and remote monitoring push it down. The binding constraint on this occupation is not per-worker defensibility but span of control: every lever above can fire and the count of supervisors still falls, because AI-generated schedules and reports let one defensible human cover 60 operators instead of 20. Levers here protect the role's content, not the headcount."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 611800,
        "wage": 58870
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 622790,
        "wage": 60420
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 631100,
        "wage": 61310
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 599900,
        "wage": 62850
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 629420,
        "wage": 61790
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 659930,
        "wage": 63510
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 671160,
        "wage": 65930
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 685140,
        "wage": 71190
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 673430,
        "wage": 74450
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 10.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}