As you sit in your office or go about your daily business take a look at your immediate surroundings. Your chair, desk or table, phone or tablet, the light switch you use, your television and your remote – they all have something in common. They are all a product of automated manufacturing (or robotics) to some degree or other.

This is certainly not a new phenomenon; Fanuc – the company for which I work – has 60 years of experience in industrial automation and has a presence in 45 countries.

Yet, partially due to what I regard as a few ill-judged comments from politicians and others, all of a sudden automation is one of the hottest business topics of the moment.

There has been talk of taxing the robots that help manufacture many of the staple products of everyday life because, according to the proponents of that line of thinking, they will make the human workforce redundant.

Whether that is political posturing or the voicing of genuine economic policy-in-the-making, it is sending out a very damaging message to the rest of the world about the industrial ambition of UK Plc. I am no historian but every single industrial revolution has seen more people employed after than before.