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Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker—for Less Than Paying a Human

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 19 2022, @07:49PM   
from the it-has-begun dept.

owl writes:

Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker:

Polar Manufacturing has been making ​metal ​hinges, locks, and brackets ​in south Chicago for more than 100 years. Some of the company's metal presses—hulking great machines that loom over a worker—date from the 1950s. Last year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its first robot employee.

The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.

​Jose Figueroa​, who manages Polar's production line, says the robot, which is leased from a company called Formic, costs the equivalent of $8 per hour, compared with a minimum wage of $15 per hour for a human employee. Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different work, increasing output, Figueroa says.

"Smaller companies sometimes suffer because they can't spend the capital to invest in new technology," Figueroa says. "We're just struggling to get by with the minimum wage increase."

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Original Submission

• Re:Questions (Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Wednesday January 19 2022, @08:48PM

  by DrkShadow (1404) on Wednesday January 19 2022, @08:48PM (#1213935)

  $8 sounds nice, especially for something one might need only briefly. But what ARE the upfront costs for something like this, if needed for a permanent basis?

  I'm wondering if that calculates in the unemployment insurance, medical insurance, paid vacation, payroll taxes, etc. that are "hidden" employee costs -- what's left is as if they're paying the machine $8/hr (but really a human at minimum wage costs the company $36/hr and the robot costs $28/hr)

  How does this thing handle unexpected situations? Given that a human was doing the job, and not a machine in the first place, it stands to reason some part of the job involved things only a human could manage.

  That's what the single human-overseer is for. This is a sheetmetal press, right? So part goes in, robot pushes a button, mechanical machine does its work, machine pulls part out. What's to go wrong? Figure out how to make that part not go wrong. Like optimizing efficiency in an engine -- if a part fails, design that part to not fail. Over time, the process will be improved such that there are no un-handled / unexpected scenarios. Of course it will be an issue at first.

  Like any "as a service" [...] Need to add a skill? $$$$. Need to adapt to even very slightly different changes? $$$$.

  Only if you change the process. If you're doing something for 50+ years, you're probably not doing that much.

  Use it more than a contract states? $$$$

  See above. They're paying hourly(?), so if it works overtime, it works overtime. Extra orders leading to increased production -- what a wonderful problem to have! (And you don't have to find another human!)

  "Fix" it every time there is a "problem"? $$$$.

  Note the provider, break-fix is on the provider. You're only billed for the time the robot is running.

  Parent

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