0 sats \ 4 replies \ @kr OP 26 Jan \ parent \ on: Robots: What Do They Do Best? What Do They Do Worst? tech
lots of good points here
if Amazon is making so much money from their warehouses, why aren’t competitors building their own fully-automated warehouses?
which happens first? 3d printing at scale or warehouse robots at scale?
good point, maybe the human form isn’t an optimal design here
Amazon lost money for decades investing/researching/iterating on automation and it's not like they're publishing the blueprints for their competition to read. Walmart has only just started investing more in automation after it became clear that Amazon's bet was starting to pay off.
Many industries are looking at automation to supplement a part of their processes, but few are looking seriously at how to re-structure their process to be fully automated.
The buildout of an automated plant takes many years and requires many engineers. America is experiencing an engineering shortage. Additionally, most chips, electronics, and robot parts come from Asia which adds even more to the cost of building these kinds of deployments in USA.
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Amazon lost money for decades investing/researching/iterating on automation and it's not like they're publishing the blueprints for their competition to read. Walmart has only just started investing more in automation after it became clear that Amazon's bet was starting to pay off.
do you think these kinds of fully automated warehouses have the same economies of scale that Amazon and Walmart’s human powered warehouses had?
or is there an outcome where robot-powered warehouses level the playing field between large and small merchants/suppliers?
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In USA, employees are extra expensive. Employers have to pay minimum wage, income tax, health insurance/benefits, safety accommodations, deal with the potential to be sued for injuries or discrimination.
Even non US employees will get sick, show up late, screw up at their job, steal things, have to be trained, they cause drama which impacts morale and they only work 8-12 hour shifts. Shopping for a employee is a process often requiring background checks, interviews, drug tests, contracts, and on-boarding rituals.
There will be a point at which automated labor out competes manual labor at everything and having human workers will be as barbaric and inefficient as having rows of women using typewriters to publish a report instead of using a inkjet printer.
At the same time, every household or community will probably have access to a local micro-factory (3d printer farm/factory) of its own so they won't need the services of the large mega-corp warehouses as much. Kinda like how the adoption of the microwave likely reduced the demand for restaurants.
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