Ten or twenty years ago, an assembly-line worker was required to exercise a few physical skills. An automobile assembler might engage repeatedly in five closely related steps to mount an assembly to a chassis. Once mastered, the work became routine and redundant.
Now, intellectual skills supersede the physical component of jobs regardless of the industry, be it financial services, technology, government, health, or legal. Today that same automobile assembler works as part of a team with the intellectual skills to work across an entire process, transforming materials into a finished product. This might include occasionally making managerial decisions and sometimes at breakneck speed. This process has allowed decreased costs while increasing productivity and quality.