Tag: wages

OM in the News: Robots Are Remaking Chinese Industry

Sam Altman wants AI to cure cancer. Elon Musk says AI robots will eliminate poverty. China is focused on something more prosaic: making better washing machines. While China’s long-term AI goals are no less ambitious than ours, its near-term priority is to shore up its role as the world’s factory floor for decades to come, reports The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 25, 2025).

Midea, an appliance maker, deploys robots to work under an AI ‘factory brain’ that acts as a central nervous system for its plant in Jingzhou.

The Chinese push is fueled by billions of dollars in government and private development– transforming every step of making and exporting goods. A clothing designer reports slashing the time it takes to make a sample by more than 70% with AI. Washing machines in China’s hinterland are being churned out under the command of an AI “factory brain.”

Port shipping containers whiz about on self-driving trucks with virtually no workers in sight, while the port’s scheduling is run by AI.

Chinese executives liken the future of factories to living organisms that can increasingly think and act for themselves, moving beyond the preprogrammed tasks at traditionally-automated factories. This could further enable the spread of “dark factories,” with operations so automated that work happens around the clock with the lights dimmed.

The advances can’t come quickly enough for China as its population is shrinking, young people are avoiding factory jobs, and pushback against Chinese exports has intensified.

AI offers a lifeline to head off those risks, by helping China make and ship more stuff faster, cheaper and with fewer workers. China wants to deploy what is available today quicker than the U.S. can, locking in any advantages. It installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, 9 times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined. Its stock of operational robots surpassed 2 million in 2024

Today, China’s average factory wages are far higher than in countries such as India. Many young Chinese are unwilling to work in factories.  The shortage of skilled labor in key manufacturing sectors could reach 30 million this year. Since most Chinese are optimistic about AI, this allows the government to deploy the technology quickly. About 83% of Chinese believe AI-powered products and services are more beneficial than harmful, double the level in the U.S.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why the push for robotics and AI in China?
  2. What can the U.S. and Europe do to remain competitive?

OM in the News: Paying Employees to Stay, Not to Go

This new In-N-Out Burger in Encinitas, CA, pays well above the state's $9 minimum wage, and the federal $7.25 minimum
This new In-N-Out Burger in Encinitas, CA, pays well above the state’s $9 minimum wage, and the federal $7.25 minimum

In-N-Out Burger, the chain based in California, pays all its employees at least $10.50 an hour, while Shake Shack, the trendy, lines-out-the-door burger emporium, has minimum pay of $9.50. Moo Cluck Moo, a fledgling company with two hamburger joints in Michigan, starts everyone at $15. “The No. 1 reason we pay our team well above the minimum wage is because we believe that if we take care of the team, they will take care of our customers,” said the CEO of Shake Shack.

The nation’s fast-food restaurants, which employ many of the country’s low-wage workers, are at the center of the debate over low pay and raising the federal minimum wage — fueled by protests demanding that fast-food chains establish a $15 wage floor, writes The New York Times (July 5, 2014). McDonald’s was pilloried last year for a hotline that advised employees how to seek food stamps and public assistance for heating and medical expenses.

Fast-food industry officials have long contended that raising the minimum wage would result in fewer jobs and higher prices. Complaining of low profit margins that generally accompany inexpensive menu items, most fast-food restaurants try to keep wages down — the median hourly wage for fast-food workers nationwide is $8.83, compared with $11.50 at Boloco and $10.70 at Shake Shack. In 2002, when the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour, Boloco raised its minimum pay to $8. It also began subsidizing commuting costs, providing English classes to immigrant employees and contributing up to 4% of an employee’s pay toward a 401(k). A major benefit of paying $15, said the owner of Moo Cluck Moo, is “we don’t have any turnover. We don’t have to train people constantly.”

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why are these wages an operations issue?

2. How does this article relate to the human resource strategy we discuss in Chapter 10 on page 398?

OM in the News: Flat US Wages and the Manufacturing Rebound

After a 35% decline in the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs between 1998 and  2010, the total since has risen by 4.3% to 11.9 million. But The Wall Street Journal (May 29,2012) writes that “wages for many manufacturing workers aren’t keeping up with inflation. The absence of wage growth may make manufacturers more likely to hire. For workers, though, it means less income, and thus less to spend.”

This wage lag is a key factor contributing to the rebounding competitiveness of U.S. industry. The  uptick in factory employment and the return of some production to U.S. shores from abroad both added jobs that probably otherwise wouldn’t exist. The U.S. has held manufacturing wages in check while there has been strong wage growth in China and moderate wage growth in Mexico.

At American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc.’s plant in Three Rivers, Mich., new hires for assembly start at $10 an hour. Those hired before 2008 get a “legacy” rate of about $18 an hour. Similarly, at the Big Three U.S. auto makers, veteran workers make  $29 to $33 an hour in base pay; recent hires earn $16 to $19. Some unions are agreeing to the use of lower-paid temporary workers. The temporary, or “casual,” assembly workers at the Harley Davidson motorcycle plant in Kansas City get about $14 an hour while union members get $22 an hour. GE announced plans to move production of electric water heaters to Louisville, Ky., from Mexico after U.S. unions agreed to a $13-an-hour starting wage for new hires, $8 to $10 or more an hour below the previous contract.

The sluggish wage growth coincides with an impressive burst of rising factory productivity. Output per hour in American manufacturing has increased by 13% in the past five years and 21% in the five years before that.

Discussion questions:

1.What are the negatives of slow wage growth in the manufacturing sector?

2. How have lower wages helped US manufacturing?

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