# More robots coming to U.S. factories



## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

Go ahead and strike Auto Workers.
More robots coming to U.S. factories


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## Ripon (Dec 22, 2012)

Automation isn't a bad thing. Cheaper products mean more people buy and that's where jobs get made.


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## survival (Sep 26, 2011)

Ripon said:


> Automation isn't a bad thing. Cheaper products mean more people buy and that's where jobs get made.


Except in corporate America.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

With more robots coming on line for production of goods, and fewer people employed doing the same, we have got to find a way to give people a decent quality of life when they have no conventional income. Our civilization depends upon it.


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## Big Country1 (Feb 10, 2014)

Ripon said:


> Automation isn't a bad thing. Cheaper products mean more people buy and that's where jobs get made.


Im not understanding?!? Do you not have to make money to be able to buy things? How can buying "cheaper" products from manufactures using robots help boost jobs?


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## Big Country1 (Feb 10, 2014)

A society with robots producing everything will leave the people job-less... Maybe a good thing if your end goal is depopulation in the first place... my.02


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## rice paddy daddy (Jul 17, 2012)

As someone who has managed people in a warehouse/production environment for over twenty years I can say from experience that the average 25-35 year old worker today has a lot of short comings. A lot.
Most are not worth what they are paid.
The good ones, middle aged workers, are not finding work because some short sighted employers want low paid workers to increase their profit, and by extension, their personal bonuses.
With a robot the bosses don't have to worry about benefits, hangovers, on-the-job drug use, and robots never call in sick.

But the country will still need low skilled minimum wage workers to stock the Chinese junk on the shelves at Walmart.


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## ekim (Dec 28, 2012)

sideKahr said:


> With more robots coming on line for production of goods, and fewer people employed doing the same, we have got to find a way to give people a decent quality of life when they have no conventional income. Our civilization depends upon it.


We don't need to* GIVE *them anything. They need to stop and think about what they are trying to achieve with all the higher wages and benefits they're asking for and what it WILL cost them in the long run and think of what the unions may be doing to the work force they support.


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## Ripon (Dec 22, 2012)

Let me explain it this way. Did you know that a gallon of gasoline enables "man" to do 8 hours of work? Without gasoline it'd take 8 hours to do what we can accomplish with gasoline. Now add to that automation. It merely reduces the time we spend on tasks that few really want to do. Oh don't get me wrong, the McDonalds' employees will be "really happy' with $15hr and you'll never have a mistaken order again. (You know how I'm kidding). Yet we can program iPads to take the orders correctly, upsell correctly and thousands of people will probably make $50k-$100k a year programming the iPads, installing them, maintaining them, and we'll all save even more time we can use on other things - other things that create jobs.

Factories that automate and lose workers build less expensive products. That means the money people spend on those products goes to other products - that creates new jobs.



Big Country1 said:


> Im not understanding?!? Do you not have to make money to be able to buy things? How can buying "cheaper" products from manufactures using robots help boost jobs?


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## Jeffofnc (Feb 7, 2015)

It's pretty simple, if our factories (the few we have left) have to keep up with technology. If we don't, you better believe that our competitors will. what are you going to buy? The American made car that's twice the price of a similar import? If you're like me you'll buy what you can afford. People feared the same thing when the automatic loom first came out. Hand weavers were obsolete, but would anybody argue that people are worse off today because fabric isn't made by hand?


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## Ripon (Dec 22, 2012)

Exactly. Look how many jobs "gasoline" created. It wasn't very good for the saddle makers was it? People adapt, change, and GET BETTER.

Wait till you see the automation I'm gunning for this summer!



Jeffofnc said:


> It's pretty simple, if our factories (the few we have left) have to keep up with technology. If we don't, you better believe that our competitors will. what are you going to buy? The American made car that's twice the price of a similar import? If you're like me you'll buy what you can afford. People feared the same thing when the automatic loom first came out. Hand weavers were obsolete, but would anybody argue that people are worse off today because fabric isn't made by hand?


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## James m (Mar 11, 2014)

Bethlehem steel didn't want to change either. Maybe if it brings the cost down exports will increase.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

rice paddy daddy said:


> As someone who has managed people in a warehouse/production environment for over twenty years I can say from experience that the average 25-35 year old worker today has a lot of short comings. A lot.
> Most are not worth what they are paid.
> The good ones, middle aged workers, are not finding work because some short sighted employers want low paid workers to increase their profit, and by extension, their personal bonuses.
> With a robot the bosses don't have to worry about benefits, hangovers, on-the-job drug use, and robots never call in sick.
> ...


RPD my good man!

I agree with everything you wrote EXCEPT the last sentence of your post. I will wager a Waffle House lunch, that before the end of 2016, Walmart will have automated stockers in some of their stores and most if not all of their distribution centers. The robot apocolypse is upon us sadly...To quote the Terminator...Hasta La Vista baby.

Slip


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## Ripon (Dec 22, 2012)

Well I'm gearing up for a grand robotic summer.

Robot series 1 is going to be the digger. The little bugger is going to plow into the side of a hill and dig, dig, and dig. He
will deposit his clay based dirt into a pile outside the dig area and by morning return to his solar powered charger.

Robot series 2 is going to take my dug up clay, and deposit enough of it to compress four bricks in the compressed earth machine,
with running recycled water. When done he can go back to the charging station too.

Robot series 3 is going to collect the compressed earth bricks and place them on the landing pads for drying.
He then can return for charging.

Robot/Drone series 1 is going to pick up a brick every 30 minutes and land and displace the brick 1300 ft 
from the dig site - my house. Each 30 minute trip for this one is a power supply, so he'll have to learn how
to change his own batteries, pick up a new set, plug the depleted batteries in and fly another mission.

Robot series 4 will take the bricks to the programmed location for my "GREAT WALL" of Nevada. He'll place
the bricks in precise locations after Robot series 5 lays out some mortar and then shifts them into a neat 
if not perfect presentation. 

After all that programming and fuss I just need about 3 dozen of each to make real progress without 
breaking my back and watching them do it


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## rice paddy daddy (Jul 17, 2012)

Slippy said:


> RPD my good man!
> 
> I agree with everything you wrote EXCEPT the last sentence of your post. I will wager a Waffle House lunch, that before the end of 2016, Walmart will have automated stockers in some of their stores and most if not all of their distribution centers. The robot apocolypse is upon us sadly...To quote the Terminator...Hasta La Vista baby.
> 
> Slip


Ummm! Waffle House! I love it. Heck, I'll buy YOU lunch.
I can see it now, some tub-o-lard welfare momma can't move out of the aisle fast enough and gets run over by an automated stocker.
Actually, some warehouses now have robotic order pickers.
It will never happen in building materials though, too many variables. Georgia Pacific tried computerized stocking and picking in 1996. I was part of the project. It used computer handsets and forklift mounted units, and the operator would tell the computer what bin he put, say, the boxcar of plywood he just unloaded, in. When a customer order generated a pick ticket, the person picking would see the order on his forklift screen directing him to the proper bin, where he would get the product.
Sounds simple, and to the college boys on the 15th floor of the Peachtree Center in Atlanta I'm sure sounded great. It never worked. We tried for over a year to make it work, and then the project was quietly dropped.


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## Camel923 (Aug 13, 2014)

Without good paying skilled and semiskilled positions the middle class will get ripped apart. I believe that it will result in more space between the haves and have nots. It will in my estimation make upward economic mobility much tougher than before. How much more welfare will be needed to help those of more megar economic means? And how much more will taxes rise as a result? 

Automation is great for the bottom line because most of the youth I see are not only not worth minimum wage, I would not hire them if they paid me and worked for free. I just see our society loosing the desire to achieve, hense the need for automation.


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

rice paddy daddy said:


> With a robot the bosses don't have to worry about benefits, hangovers, on-the-job drug use, and robots never call in sick.


My work is trying to implement mobile robots in various departments. The ones in my area need heat breaks and are more finicky than the men they are trying to replace. They get "lost" or locked up all the time. They cannot see a potential problem or quality issues. It takes 12 of the little buggers to do one man's job. Half of them are usually broken. If they actually ran like they are supposed to we would all be out of work. The company had tried and tried for the last 5 years to make it work. But it just doesn't. BTW this is a huge company so their budget and engineering doesn't factor in to why these bots don't work. You need human senses to make a quality product. Just my experience, maybe the stationary bots we all see building cars don't have these issues. But I doubt it.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

Arklatex said:


> My work is trying to implement mobile robots in various departments. The ones in my area need heat breaks and are more finicky than the men they are trying to replace. They get "lost" or locked up all the time. They cannot see a potential problem or quality issues. It takes 12 of the little buggers to do one man's job. Half of them are usually broken. If they actually ran like they are supposed to we would all be out of work. The company had tried and tried for the last 5 years to make it work. But it just doesn't. BTW this is a huge company so their budget and engineering doesn't factor in to why these bots don't work. You need human senses to make a quality product. Just my experience, maybe the stationary bots we all see building cars don't have these issues. But I doubt it.


The irony is that your company probably has employed some extra maintenance people to keep the 'bots working.


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Slippy said:


> The irony is that your company probably has employed some extra maintenance people to keep the 'bots working.


Yep! The job title is "Attendant" lol


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Also, the attendants are barely able to keep up...


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

If I was an auto-worker or in the warehouse business I would become a robotics mechanic/technician. With all those robots somebody is going to have to repair and maintain them!

When cars started to become popular the blacksmiths were mostly put out of business but a lot of them became mechanics - My mom's Dad was one of those. You either evolve or die in the workforce or as a company.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

The choices are to automate and lose some jobs or ship the manufacturing overseas and lose them all.


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## Swango (Feb 15, 2015)

Yes, also programmers. Machines of that style are fairly general things. Programmers tell them what to do and how to do it. He who writes the rules...


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## mmikeclass06 (Feb 13, 2015)

working for a really large internation electronics company (probably half of you have the phone manufacture) a while back we took a simple job (minimal skill of carrying product from one location to another) although it eliminated 60-80 jobs. it did increase production overall due to less issues (people are not always as reliable as a well made robot). yes the machines occasionaly go down for routine maintinance (rarely do they break or freak out in the past few years) it influinced a couple of the lower payed younger workers to go to school, learn to work on robotics enabeling them to eventualy work on the machines with MUCH higher pay and a better work quality that they like. so even with robotics taking jobs. It does help the people who wake up and see the better in it make a change in life to better alot. take it as you want but i am totaly down for robotics cause i see the good overweights the bad.


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