Making License Plates
This is a phrase I first saw in the book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. The phrase refers to work that is devoid of creative thinking.
For example, a company is starting a new product line. In the beginning of that process, they need engineers to design the product. Artists and graphic designers are called in to promote it and design the exterior components. Upper management starts to crunch numbers, plan the logistics, and make those tough, often risky decisions. After all that work is done, a factory somewhere puts the parts together and ships out the product. Everything before the factory is creative work. Once the factory starts to pump them out, all the work after that is discrete repeatable tasks. Tasks that can conceivably be done by robots.
Most jobs are of the Making License Plates variety. And every job has some components of it.
