> how often the people that are being replaced are on the fly fixing the system the machine is intended to crystallize and automate.

If the system is broken, this is actually a good thing.

I have some experience doing automation work in small and large scale factories. When automating manufacturing work you almost always discover some flaws in the product or process that humans have been covering up as part of their job. These problems surface during the automation phase and get prioritized for fixes.

You might think you could accomplish the same thing by directly asking the people doing the work what could be improved, but in my experience they either don’t notice it any more because it’s part of their job or, in extreme cases, they like that the inefficiency exists because they think it provides extra job security.

> If the system is broken, this is actually a good thing.

And the system is always broken. Reality is messy, systems are rigid, there always has to be a permissive layer somewhere in the interface.