In Warehouse, Humans? Robotics (Kiva or CasePick)?

choi

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(1) Geoffrey A Fowler, Holiday Hiring Call: People vs. Robots. Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 2010 (title in the print).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704073804576023613748146944.html

Quote:

"Meanwhile, just outside of Phoenix, Amazon.com Inc. takes a more human-powered approach. There, employees walk 18 to 20 miles a day

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704073804576023613748146944.html#ixzz18rHgXYaD

"One sign of Amazon's efficiency are its increasingly late deadlines for free shipping. Last week, the retailer extended the deadline for people who need to receive gifts by Christmas by two days to Dec. 19, its latest deadline ever.

My comment:
(a) The Kanji for teh Japanese noun or verb kaizen is 改善.
(b) Car makers in Japan and the West found it the hard way. They used to have robots making cars. Then to their surprise, they found that China could produce cheaper cars by using humans entirely--almost--due to cheap labor there.

(2) Scott Kirshner, Born in Boston, growing in Calif; Highlights from Innovation Economy blog. Boston Globe, Dec. 20, 2010.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/12/20/born_in_boston_growing_in_calif/

My comment:
(a) The title of the report is about a company that moved to California. But the second part of the report is about a Wilmington (a suburb to the north of Boston), Massachusetts subsidiary that has nothing to do with California. In the print, Part II had the heading "Warehouse robotics" (same as the online version) but because the report was split into different pages (pages 1 and 3 of Business section), the latter page has an additional title for the report: "Robotics company is hiring (people, that is)."

CasePick looks complicated. See a photo of CasePick. Flickr (uploaded by Seattle4e, on Nov. 11, 2008)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10368024@N04/3024235314

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