We keep reading of the lack of people in the fast food industry. This is due to the Covid pandemic, the pay rate and other external factors. Robotics has been hugely influential in the automotive and other manufacturing industries for some time. We have even seen it enter the serving industry with robots delivering food in restaurants and hospitals. But now meet Flippy, Flippy is the robotic french fry cooker that works 23 hours a day, 7 days a week without a bathroom or meal break. It gets a one hour maintenance and clean-up break every day. It just works and works and works. This Flippy works at a White Castle fast food restaurant in Merrillville, Indiana. I remember White Castle's from the early 1950's, long before McDonalds ever reared its Goliath like head. A great article in today's Wall Street Journal on Flippy by Christopher Mims is excellent. Robotics, Automation and Artificial Intelligence is the future. Get ready for it. Over time, it will speed-up the process of absorbing low paying unfilled jobs.
Recently, I have had quite a few people ask me in the course of small talk, what exactly is this "supply chain" talk they are hearing about again regarding th e Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus. They've heard the horror stories on toilet paper or disinfectants in many stores. Now we've heard of hoarders over-stocking their own homes or selling these products on the street corner at inflated prices. Many people ask how can this be; what causes this; we are in the 21st century; etc. I remember the start of this current problem back in the 1960s (perhaps earlier) with the start of such programs as MRP (Materials Requirement Planning), but certainly not limited to this program and parlaying further into programs and schemes like J-I-T (Just-In-Time). Bottom line and perhaps over-simplified, these programs were and are intended to speed up production and cut costs. There are newer and greater programs like Le...
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