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posted by on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the customers-who-aren't-idiots dept.

What one piece of technology would most improve your working life?

Chances are it wouldn't be a glove. But car workers in Germany are now using smart gloves that not only save time but prevent accidents as well.

It is an example of how tech-enhanced humans are fighting back against the seemingly unstoppable rise of the robots.

At BMW's spare parts plant in Dingolfing, for example, which employs around 17,500 people, hand-held barcode readers have been replaced by gloves that scan objects when you put your thumb and forefinger together. The data is sent wirelessly to a central computer.

The hi-tech gloves allow workers to keep hold of items with both hands while scanning more quickly. While this may only save a few seconds each time, BMW reckons it adds up to 4,000 work minutes, or 66 hours, a day.

It's not just gloves; the article gives several examples of cool technology that help workers.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:41PM (#444336)

    As long as the PHB didn't know about the time machine.

    Otherwise, the PHB would make even crazier demands and would still expect you make it by a certain deadline even if it takes years of work.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:36PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:36PM (#444361) Journal
    There has to be an awesome sci fi story in this. Boss wants flunky to deliver a crucial one month peek in the future for an upcoming big contract negotiation. The negotiation flops because boss didn't take into account that his aggressive tactics would cause the negotiation to fail. Obviously, the problem is that the boss didn't get the right report. Flunky slaves away for another month and then goes back in time to kick his alternate out of the way and deliver the report. Boss fails again for the same reason as before.

    Soon the boss gets this exciting scrum match with hundreds of time copies of his flunky duking it out, with one sweating, panting, disheveled victor handing him that damn report and he no longer cares that the negotiation fails hard. This is just too much fun and he's got it on video.

    Meanwhile the flunky has been hanging out on this same beach in Aruba for, like, forever and figuring out how to do 43% of the beach babes with five miles of his favorite bar and going from working stiff to extremely comfortably retired in a month. The report hasn't been touched in the last 400 time cycles after he hid a penis on every page of the report, his true crowning achievement.

    "Time travel is the best thing ever." they both declare.
  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 21 2016, @06:27PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday December 21 2016, @06:27PM (#444383)

    You assume that not knowing how his lackey accomplished the impossible would make the PHB less likely to demand even greater impossibilities...

    Besides, if the boss knew about the time machine then he'd have to pay labor-time instead of calendar-time, and can you imagine how overtime would stack up if you're working 10,000 hours per week?