Tag: automation

OM in the News: McDonald’s Unveils First Automated Location

McDonald’s opened its first automated restaurant, with machines handling everything from taking orders to delivering the food – and dividing opinions everywhere, reports Fox Business (Dec. 24, 2022). 

Guest Post: Shoe Capital of the World

Our Guest Post comes from Prof. Howard Weiss, who created the ExcelOM and POM software that we provide free to our readers.

Lynn Massachusetts In colonial days shoemakers had a capacity of roughly 5 shoes–not pairs–per day. The industrial revolution moved shoe manufacturing to factories, increasing capacity to 50 pairs per day. In 1883, Jan Matzeliger of Lynn, Massachusetts patented a machine that would use a wooden mold to form the leather top of the shoe and then attach it to the bottom. The new machine replaced this step (called lasting) which was performed by hand by skilled shoemakers. And it increased the capacity to 750 pairs per day while reducing the price of shoes by 50%.

 Figure 8.1 of your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook mentions several factors for a successful location which we examine now with respect to shoe manufacturing.

Labor talent Due to the continuous flow of skilled shoemakers into the state, 234 shoe manufacturers chose Lynn as their location and manufactured over 1,000,000 pairs per day. This made Lynn the Shoe Manufacturing Capital of the World. The state of Massachusetts produced more shoes than anywhere else in the U.S. through World War I. 

Matzeliger’s lasting machine

Leon, Mexico Today, however, over 90% of shoes bought in the U.S. are not manufactured here. One of the major manufacturing locations is Leon, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico which currently has over 3,000 shoe manufacturers including Nike, Converse, Crocs, Skechers and New Balance. This makes Leon the current Shoe Manufacturing Capital of the World. There are several reasons for this:

Location of markets Leon is located roughly 250 miles northwest of Mexico City and has easy highway access to other cities in Mexico and to the U.S. through the 45 U.S.-Mexico border crossings. Mexico’s infrastructure is in excellent shape as are its highways. Shipments by truck to the U.S. take no more than 3 days, and to Latin America no more than 7 days. Guanajuato has an international airport with flights to cities in Mexico and L.A., Houston, Chicago and Dallas. Shipments to Europe take less than 2 weeks.

Labor talent again Mexico has had large influx of skilled leatherworkers from Europe.

Proximity to raw materials/supply chain One of the key materials needed to manufacture shoes is leather and there are nearly 700 leather tanneries in Guanajuato providing this raw material.

Classroom discussion questions: 

  1. What major manufacturer or service organization is located near your home or school and what were the factors for selecting that location?
  2. What is the effect of NAFTA in selling shoes manufactured in Mexico in the United States?

OM in the News: Easing Worker Shortages with Automation

We used to ask whether robots will take over the jobs of humans. But that’s not quite the right question in 2022, as finding workers to fill the large number of jobs currently open in manufacturing is almost impossible. “There aren’t enough workers,” says a 3M exec. “And it’s not just large factories with low mix and high volume that are seeing this, it’s also medium-sized and small companies. Everyone is looking to automation to bridge the worker shortage.”

Operations managers are getting the message and in 2021, factories and other industrial users ordered 39,708 robots (valued at over $2 billion), a 28% increase from 2020. While robots have been in auto plants for a long time, orders from non-automotive companies now represent 58% of the North American totals.

A breakdown of industry orders is as follows:

  •  Food and Consumer Goods:  up 29%
  •  Semiconductors and Electronics/Photonics: up 2%
  • Plastics and Rubber: up 4%
  • Life Sciences/Pharma/Biomed: up 4%
  • All Other Industries:  up 65%

“There is a process we use to engage the operators and manufacturing employees to get them ready for automation,” says 3M. “It’s never about a 1-1 replacement of a worker.  We explain that if someone was doing a certain job and now the robot will do the job, the employee can learn how to operate them and troubleshoot them. This leads to a higher pay grade. It can be a real win-win situation.”

The skills of the workforce have been changing over the past few years, reports Industry Week (March 10, 2022). Manufacturing has tended to pay higher wages than the service sector and is seeing an increasing portion of operators having either associate degrees, technical degrees, or even bachelors degrees. The upskilling of talent was underscored by a 2021 study from the World Economic Forum that predicted that automation would result in an increase of 58 million jobs. And two-thirds of the jobs transformed by automation will become higher-skilled.

These differing degrees of education are going to be essential as U.S. manufacturing will grow. Given the recent supply chain problems, we will see an increase of more companies producing products in the U.S. and automation will play a key role. So it’s an important tool for companies. Contrary to the belief that automation is taking jobs away, it’s automation that will keep companies competitive, and stay in business and protect jobs.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why does 3M say that robots will not replace workers? Is that true in all industries?
  2. Why are manufacturing companies looking for better educated employees?

 

OM in the News: AI and Amazon’s Army of Workers

Amazon uses software to manage in a way that’s unlike almost any other company, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb.6-7, 2021). Whether they’re driving a delivery van or picking items from shelves, Amazon’s employees are monitored, evaluated, rewarded and even flagged for reprimand or coaching by software.

Amazon is expanding automated capabilities, including fleets of robots in warehouses.

Executives at the company are emphatic about their desire to preserve the health of employees, and give them opportunities to grow and develop, but the way Amazon manages both employees and seller-partners with algorithms is often at odds with those values. 

Throughout the supply chain of Amazon’s e-commerce operation, humans are onboarded rapidly into jobs that require almost no training. This is possible because of how directed and constrained by algorithms and automation these roles have become. In some fulfillment centers, employees who pick items for orders from robot shelves are surveilled by AI-enabled cameras. A cloud-connected scanning gun monitors the rate at which they pick items, the number and duration of their breaks and whether they’re grabbing the right items and putting them in the right places. Managers step in only if software reports a problem, such as a worker falling behind.

 Amazon objected to the characterization that anyone in its facilities is “managed by algorithm,” because all associates have a human manager who is responsible for them and who coaches them. “Our front-line workers are the heart and soul of Amazon,” said an exec. “Only a small percentage of associates are fired or leave the company because of performance issues.”

Whether all this AI, software and automation will be used to ease the burden of its employees, or to force them to work harder to keep up, is a choice all companies face in the age of digitization, and none more so than Amazon.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an Amazon warehouse worker?
  2. How does Amazon’s approach differ from the four labor standards methods discussed in Chapter 10 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text? (See pages 420-429)

OM in the News: How Applications, Automation, Analytics and AI Transform OM

Digital transformation, writes the INFORMS magazine Analytics (June 2020), is leveraging modern technology and innovation so that an organization can help its people achieve maximum capability and the company processes can run optimally. Digital transformation also helps a business focus on its greatest means of success: its customers. Its main technology drivers come from the “Straight A’s”: applications, automation, analytics and AI. Technology, which we discuss in Chapter 7, is a great enabler for organizational productivity, creativity, efficiency and improved profits.

Applications: Ideal business applications help organizations manage business processes and enhance productivity. There are cloud-based business application platforms that provide solutions for end-to-end business processes right from strategy development, product development, work management, project management, field services, customer services, and operations.

Automation: Automating business processes to remove manual, redundant tasks, which can free staff from repetitive, time-consuming work items.

Analytics: Using actionable analytics, organizations can access relevant data and relationships to take immediate action on business initiatives to achieve stronger outcomes.

AI:  With AI, companies can literally transform business processes into intelligent systems that will help identify patterns, gain deeper insights from data, and leverage data science to improve fact-based decision-making.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What is data analytics, and why is it an important OM tool? (Hint: see Module G in your Heizer/Render/Munson text)
  2. Why is automation so important to U.S. supply chains?

OM in the News: Post-Pandemic Supply Chains and Automation

A U.S.-based engineer working from home uses  software to examine a manufacturing line in China.

Factories around the world are turning to technology to help them safely open back up after being shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, reports The Wall  Street Journal (June 15, 2020). Software, sensors, robotics and A.I. tools that make it easier for workers to keep their distance in factories and let engineers monitor and fix problems remotely have surged in demand. “Covid has really been the catalyst for the adoption of software solutions to automate workflows and make it more efficient when you have less people around doing things,” said one industry expert.

Manufacturers are focusing on using software to dynamically change assembly lines. And they are using A.I. to remotely do quality inspections in real-time. For U.S. electronics manufacturers, mistakes, defects and wasted time add up to 25% of  costs and often require engineers from the U.S. to visit factories in China to fix problems. A.I. systems can scan images of every product produced on an assembly line to identify anomalies and defects. Engineers can then analyze and fix them remotely.

One Calif. food manufacturer remained open during the pandemic by using enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to remotely manage its manufacturing, supply chain and finances, letting 30% of its employees work from home. Meanwhile, technology is helping manufacturers deal with disruption to global supply chains stemming from factory shutdowns. Clear Metal, in San Francisco, has proprietary data from sources such as satellite data, shipping ports and trucking companies, along with A.I. that can predict problems in supply chains and help companies change shipping methods or suppliers in real-time.

And of course, supply-chain problems caused by factories closing in China have caused companies to look to move manufacturing closer to home. The only way to do that is automation, with factories closer to customers. Previously, automation was only used by large factories with budgets of millions of dollars with long production cycles. But automated assembly lines are now available for use in smaller spaces than large factories, with one machine doing the work of 3 people at a fraction of the cost.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How can technology help improve OM?
  2. Why is automation important in reshoring?

OM in the News: Tyson’s Computer Vision Technology Improves Inventory Accuracy

Tyson is rolling out a computer-vision-enabled inventory tracking system at facilities where it packs chicken into trays for grocery stores, writes Supply Chain Dive (Feb. 11, 2020) The system can read SKU information and weight, replacing what Tyson described as communication by hand gestures followed by manual inventory entry. By the end of the year, Tyson’s automated inventory tracking technology will combine computer vision, machine-learning and edge computing to expand its speed and processing capability.

Automated inventory tracking using computer vision led to a double-digit increase in inventory accuracy in the 3 facilities currently using the technology. The company plans to expand the program to all 10 of its poultry plants.

Though cold, wet storage environments make implementing new technologies difficult, the payoff of real-time accurate inventory information is already evident for Tyson. The company recently opened the Tyson Manufacturing Automation Center, where it works with manufacturers and suppliers to develop new technologies and trains employees to use it. The company has spent $215 million on new technologies in the last 5 years.

Precise, real-time inventory visibility can increase the frequency with which Tyson fulfills grocery customer orders on time and in full in the best of times. But inventory management is particularly key in times of uncertainty, and Tyson is dealing with plenty. The disruptive forces of shifting global trade policy, a fire at an important Tyson facility, and African swine fever, which all distorted usual supply and demand patterns, made a relevant forecast next to impossible.

Major meat companies are leaning toward similar monitoring technologies and automation, whether through production or processing. Cargill is starting to use computer vision to track animal health in dairy operations. But a more consumer-directed application inspired Tyson’s work. Similar technology enables Amazon’s cashier-less stores, which led executives to explore applying it in poultry plants.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Describe what a vision system is (See Chapter 7 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text).
  2.  How will this help Tyson control inventory?

OM in the News: Walmart’s Grocery Robots

Walmart’s Alphabot machines are designed to up efficiency and cut labor costs.

In the backroom of a Walmart store in Salem, N.H., is a floor-to-ceiling robotic system that the retailer hopes will help it sell more groceries online. Workers stand on platforms in front of screens assembling online orders of milk, cereal and toilet paper from the hulking automated system. Wheeled robots carrying small baskets move along metal tracks to collect those items. They are bagged for pickup later by shoppers or delivery to homes.

Walmart is using automation to improve efficiency in a fast-growing but costly business that comes with a range of logistical challenges, reports The Wall Street Journal (Jan.9, 2020). The backroom robots help cut labor costs and fill orders faster and more accurately. They also unclog aisles that these days can get crowded with clerks picking products for online orders. Walmart can’t “disadvantage our most-profitable customer, which is the one who drives to the store and does all the work themselves,” said a company exec.

A store worker can collect around 80 products from store shelves an hour. The robotic system, called Alphabot, is designed to collect 800 products an hour per workstation, operated by a single individual. Workers stock the 24-foot-high machine each day with the products most often ordered online, including refrigerated and frozen foods.

Walmart has become an online grocery heavyweight by offering a service from thousands of stores that lets shoppers pick up online orders from store parking lots without leaving their cars. It also offers home grocery delivery from more than 1,000 stores. Online grocery sales are growing fast, but the logistical and profit challenges of filling shoppers’ orders and delivering fresh food to homes have retailers battling to find a model that pays off.

Using store workers to fill orders with products already on shelves isn’t only costly, it makes it hard to tell online shoppers exactly what’s available at any given moment. “The whole problem with picking inventory from the shelf is inventory is never where it’s supposed to be,” said an industry analyst.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Alphabot system?
  2.  Chapter 2 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text lists 3 approaches to achieving competitive advantage. Which one(s) does Walmart employ?

OM in the News: Walmart’s Move to Automate Its Stores

An automated shelf scanner is among the robots that Walmart is introducing.

Walmart is expanding its use of robots in stores to help monitor inventory, clean floors and unload trucks, part of the retail giant’s efforts to control labor costs as it spends more to raise wages and offer new services like online grocery delivery, reports Supply & Demand Chain Executive (April 12, 2019). At least 300 stores this year will add machines that scan shelves for out-of-stock products. Autonomous floor scrubbers will be deployed in 1,500 stores to help speed up cleaning. And the number of conveyor belts that automatically scan and sort products as they come off trucks will double, to 1,200.

The company said the addition of a single machine can cut a few hours a day of work previously done by a human, or allow Walmart to allocate fewer people to complete a task, a large saving when spread around 4,600 U.S. stores. Executives are focused on giving workers more time to do other tasks, and on hiring in growing areas like e-commerce. Store workers spend 2-3 hours a day driving a floor scrubber through a store using the manual machines.

The automatic conveyor belts cut the number of workers needed to unload trucks by half, from 8 to 4 workers. An additional 900 stores will also get 16-foot-high towers that let shoppers pick up online orders without interacting with a human.

Retailers and other companies that hire large numbers of low-skilled hourly workers are increasingly looking to automation as they face higher labor costs and aim to improve retention amid the lowest unemployment in decades. Target added machines to count cash to backrooms of stores last year, following a similar move by Walmart.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. In what other ways can automation be used at Walmart to increase OM efficiency?
  2. What is driving this expansion of automation?

OM in the News: Retail’s Inventory Woes

New survey findings, reported by Supply & Demand Chain Executive (Feb. 28, 2019), uncover the chronic inventory problems affecting the $1.3 trillion retail industry. The vast majority (87%) of corporate retail professionals report inaccurate inventories are to blame for more lost revenue than theft (13%), and the breadth of the problem is apparent: nearly all (99%) survey respondents admit to some kind of constant inventory problem.

Despite major spending on inventory management, catastrophic problems remain.
73% state inaccurate inventory forecasting is a constant issue, meaning retailers end up with too much or too little supply to meet demand
66% say price inaccuracy is a consistent issue, which can lead to unbalanced P&L reports
65% report an inability to track inventory through the supply chain, resulting in potential sales lost

Wasted time is wasted profits.
67% of retailers feel that analyzing inventory on store shelves is not an effective use of employees’ time
Data shows that instead of spending time on sales-driven customer service and upselling, the majority of employee time is spent filling out-of-stock holes on shelves (56%) and pulling items forward on shelves (55%)

Automation is the answer.
76% of retailers say the introduction of robots in stores would improve employee productivity
74% said inventory accuracy would improve as a result, while increased profits would be another direct result of introducing in-store robots
A majority (62%) of retailers feel that employees would embrace robots

An interesting class exercise would be to ask students who have worked in retail what their own experiences have been.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the causes of such inventory “inaccuracies”?
  2. What suggestions does Chapter 12 offer regarding inventory accuracy?

OM in the News: FedEx’s Delivery Robot

The new FedEx Same-Day Bot can climb stairs to deliver packages.

FedEx will soon start testing robots that could make same-day deliveries of medicine, pizzas and other items to consumers’ homes, pushing the parcel-delivery giant into a new market competing against startups like Postmates that use humans for rapid deliveries.

The project makes FedEx the latest in a growing stream of companies to test automated, unmanned machines to make deliveries, writes The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 28, 2019). Amazon and UPS have demonstrated drones to deliver packages in certain areas, and Amazon has displayed a rolling robot it calls Scout in trials on city streets. Grocery chain Kroger recently showed off an unmanned vehicle that can deliver groceries in certain markets, and several robotics startups are testing autonomous delivery robots that use sensors and cameras to navigate sidewalks for short trips, including lunch deliveries to crowded Beijing office buildings.

But on-demand delivery companies such as Deliv and DoorDash that make point-to-point trips carrying food or e-commerce purchases typically rely on armies of couriers who travel by car, scooter or bicycle. The FedEx “SameDay Bot” is starting off with tests planned in the corporation’s hometown of Memphis. AutoZone, Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens and Walmart are looking at using the FedEx bot. Retailers envision having robot fleets ready to make same-day deliveries that would be branded with the retailer’s logo and modified for different uses– a cooler for grocery, a heater for pizza.

“The economics of a point-to-point delivery versus a planned or even an overnight delivery, they’re just very different,” says a FedEx exec. “Eventually, we believe the majority of same-day, point-to-point will be delivered using the FedEx SameDay Bot.”

Your students will enjoy the 30 second video embedded in the article.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What makes delivery with the robot less than optimal?
  2. What are the robot’s main advantages?

OM in the News: Will Robots Will Soon Rule the Warehouse?

Tracking the progress of the today’s orders at Southern Glazer’s.

Right in the center of Florida, in the city of Lakeland, lay some of the most technologically sophisticated distribution centers in the country, writes The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 9-10, 2019). You’ll find operations from Amazon, DHL (for Ikea), Walmart , Rooms to Go, Medline and Publix, along with a huge Geico call center, the world’s largest liquor distribution warehouse, and numerous local factories.

Some experts are arguing that the economic good times for Lakeland could rapidly come to an end. Brookings Institution placed it third on its list of metros that are most at risk of losing jobs because of the very same automation and A.I. that make its factories, warehouses and offices so productive.

To understand what’s going on in Lakeland, we look at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the world’s biggest alcoholic-beverage distributor, and its highly automated 1.3-million-square-foot facility which ships out 85,000-90,000 cases/day. Like many other distributors in the area, Southern Glazer’s chose Lakeland because land is cheap, highways are readily accessible and wages are low. The facility employs 368 warehouse workers. As in automated warehouses the world over, humans do only the jobs that machines can’t—either knowledge work like managing the overall system or physical tasks that require a combination of delicacy, speed and visual acuity. All of the heavy lifting—from placing 2,500-pound pallets into 5-story shelving systems to conveying individual crates throughout the warehouse—is done by machines.

In many ways, the Lakeland warehouse represents a triumph of engineering. Ten years ago, Southern Glazer’s operated 5 warehouses in Florida. It consolidated them all into one thanks to automation–which meant layoffs of almost 20% of the workforce. With automation, though, workers use their brains more, managing the flow of goods through systems and adapting them as consumer demand changes. This has led to much lower turnover. Over the long run, there’s no evidence that automation reduces the number of jobs. Indeed, countries that automate the fastest appear to also grow their economies the fastest.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Will we soon see a “light’s out” warehouse?
  2. What functions are hard to automate at a distribution center?

OM in the News: The Hidden Automation Agenda

The Milwaukee offices of the Taiwanese electronics maker Foxconn, which plans to replace 80% of the company’s workers with robots in 5-10 years

In public, many CEOs wring their hands over the negative consequences that A.I. and automation could have for workers. They talk about the need to provide a safety net for people who lose their jobs as a result of automation. But in reality, writes The New York Times (Jan. 26, 2019), many are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers.

All over the world, executives are spending billions of dollars to transform their businesses into lean, digitized, highly automated operations. They see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen. A 2017 survey by Deloitte found that 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% next year. Investment bank UBS projects that the A.I. industry could be worth $180 billion by next year.

The author of “AI Superpowers” predicts that A.I. will eliminate 40% of the world’s jobs within 15 years. He said that CEOs were under enormous pressure from shareholders and boards to maximize short-term profits, and that the rapid shift toward automation was the inevitable result. But other experts have predicted that A.I. will create more new jobs than it destroys, and that job losses caused by automation will probably not be catastrophic.

The CEO of the Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com said last year that “I hope my company would be 100% automation someday.” The World Economic Forum estimates that of the 1.37 million workers who are projected to be fully displaced by automation in the next decade, only 1 in 4 can be profitably reskilled by private-sector programs. “The choice isn’t between automation and non-automation,” said the director of M.I.T.’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. “It’s between whether you use the technology in a way that creates shared prosperity, or more concentration of wealth.”

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What can A.I. do to help OM functions?
  2. Will A.I. replace as many jobs as some predict?

OM in the News: How Robots Will Change Retail Forever

This Amazon distribution center in Baltimore can fulfill a million orders in a day. It may not need humans for long.

What if your company could store and deliver goods as easily as data? Amazon, Walmart and others are using AI and robotics to transform everything from appliance shopping to grocery delivery. “Welcome to the physical cloud,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 15, 2018).

Take, as an example, Amazon’s one-million-square-foot distribution center in Baltimore. Its scaffolding and seemingly endless conveyor belts disappear at a vanishing point within the building. The machine is a dazzling combination of chutes, ladders, rollers and 11 miles’ worth of conveyor belts. Customers’ orders move from shelving into bins and from bins into boxes as they travel via the machine straight into delivery vans, passing by stationary workers at various points along the way. Humans are rarely required to move around here. It’s much faster, and cheaper, to have stuff brought to them.

This is where robots come in. Kiva robots can carry up to 750 pounds of goods in their 40-odd cubbies. After a customer places an order, a robot carrying the desired item scoots over to a worker, who reads on a screen what item to pick and what cubby it’s located in, scans a bar code and places the item in a bright-yellow bin that travels by conveyor belt to a packing station. AI suggests an appropriate box size; a worker places the item in the box, which a robot tapes shut and, after applying a shipping label, sends on its way. Humans are needed mostly for grasping and placing, tasks that robots haven’t mastered yet.

Amazon’s robots signal a sea change in how the things we buy will be aggregated, stored and delivered. The company requires 1 minute of human labor to get a package onto a truck, but that number is headed to zero. Autonomous warehouses will merge with autonomous manufacturing and delivery to form a fully automated supply chain.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How does this latest Amazon facility differ from the one we describe in the Global Company Profile that opens Chapter 12?
  2. How is AI being used in this warehouse?

 

OM in the News: Retooling China

It isn’t clear how long it will take for the rest of China to follow Dongguan’s example.

Factories in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan once employed what one employee called a “magnificent sea of people.” But rising labor costs and a new generation of Chinese with little interest in toiling in factories forced a new tack, reports The New York Times (July 5, 2018). Now the sea of people is being replaced by a whirring array of boxy machines, each performing work that used to take 15 people. The factory changes suggests that Beijing’s vision of Made in China 2025 — the ambitious state-driven plan to retool China’s industries to compete in areas like automation, microchips and self-driving cars —is coming from the bottom up: from the businesses and cities across China that know they must modernize or perish. Dongguan long relied on making and exporting shoes, toys and electronic parts to the U.S. and Europe.

The average worker’s income rose fourfold over the past decade. Fewer young people wanted to work on dull and stressful assembly lines, preferring service jobs — like waiting tables and delivering e-commerce packages — that let them interact with people or move around. Some factories moved to lower-cost countries or shut down for good. Dongguan’s companies had to do something. They committed to modernizing.

Mentech, a telecom equipment supplier there, once had hundreds of workers winding, packaging and testing magnetic wires, all by hand. Today, the company is desperate for workers. On the side of one factory building it lists the on-the-job benefits it offers: monthly wages with overtime of up to about $1,100, air-conditioned dormitories, and free Wi-Fi.

Today, a factory floor that once needed over 300 workers now needs 100. More than half of the factory has been automated. The workers clustered around the machines will probably be replaced by machines themselves in a year or two. “The biggest trend in manufacturing is that automation is irreversible,” says a Chinese industry expert.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. In what ways has Chinese manufacturing paralleled the history of manufacturing in the U.S?
  2. Why are Chinese firms having trouble staffing their factories?