Production flexibility and tires

So apparently America has a tire shortage — or at least a specialty tire shortage. And according to Automotive News, this has been going on for a while (Pirelli plant in Ga. masters small-batch, premium tires, Oct 11). Over the last decade or so, the number of tire sizes used in the United States has [...]

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White collar automation

Slate’s technology writer Farhad Manjoo has had an interesting series of article on the increasing use of robots and automation in what many would consider white-collar profession. Despite the somewhat alarmist title (Will Robots Steal Your Job?), the series is a fairly evenhanded look at how technology is evolving. I found the piece on pharmacists particularly interesting (My [...]

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What does “Made in America” look like?

We are nearly two months into the baseball season and we have yet to have a baseball related post. Now that the Red Sox have crept above 500, it is time to rectify the situation. Check out this video on making baseball gloves: The interesting part of this to my mind is what it says [...]

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Apparently our robot overlords want the crappy retail jobs too

How’s this for an alarmist headline? Retail jobs are disappearing as shoppers adjust to self-service (LA Times Mar 3) Here’s the article’s point of a view in a nutshell: In an industry that employs nearly 1 in 10 Americans and has long been a reliable job generator, companies increasingly are looking to peddle more products [...]

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Kaizen and cloud computing for agriculture

Here is a curious article from the Wall Street Journal (Japanese Farms Look to the ‘Cloud‘, Jan 18). On the one hand, it is a novel application of “manufacturing logic” and some serious analytics. On the other, it seems the article was written with buzzword bingo in mind. The setting in question is Japanese agriculture, [...]

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Automated sushi

How much staff would you expect is needed to run a 196 seat restaurant? Not a fast-food restaurant per se but one where you order from your table and your food is brought to you. The New York Times has a story about Kura, a Japanese sushi chain,   that runs restaurants that size with just [...]

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Fulfillment: Man vs machine

There is a really fascinating story in today’s Wall Street Journal on how e-tailers are organizing their fulfillment centers (Holiday Help: People vs. Robots, Dec 20). In a nutshell, the question is to what extent should retailers rely on automation instead of humans. Robots, of course, can be a lot more productive. As stated in the video [...]

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Lean guitar strings

Here’s an interesting video on making guitar strings at D’Addario. The punch line is that like many other firms they are attempting to boost productivity by (among other things) implementing lean operating techniques in order to remain competitive while producing in the U.S.  (See for example this post.)  I, however, have  a quibble with the [...]

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