{"id":129205,"date":"2022-09-07T09:29:10","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T09:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=129205"},"modified":"2022-09-07T09:29:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T09:29:10","slug":"the-supply-chain-broke-robots-are-supposed-to-help-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/the-supply-chain-broke-robots-are-supposed-to-help-fix-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Supply Chain Broke. Robots Are Supposed to Help Fix It."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The people running companies that deliver all manner of products gathered in Philadelphia last week to sift through the lessons of the mayhem besieging the global supply chain. At the center of many proposed solutions: robots and other forms of automation.<\/p>\n<p>On the showroom floor, robot manufacturers demonstrated their latest models, offering them as efficiency-enhancing augments to warehouse workers. Driverless trucks and drones commanded display space, advertising an unfolding era in which machinery will occupy a central place in bringing products to our homes.<\/p>\n<p>The companies depicted their technology as a way to save money on workers and optimize scheduling, while breaking down resistance to a future centered on evolving forms of automation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get people motivated to do this work,\u201d said Kary Zate, senior director of marketing communications at Locus Robotics, a leading manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots \u2014 carts that roll through warehouses, accompanying humans who select goods off shelves. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to do those jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More than two years into the pandemic, persistent economic shocks have intensified traditional conflicts between employers and employees around the globe. Higher prices for energy, food and other goods \u2014 in part the result of enduring supply chain tangles \u2014 have prompted workers to demand higher wages, along with the right to continue working from home. Employers cite elevated costs for parts, raw materials and transportation in holding the line on pay, yielding a wave of strikes in countries like Britain.<\/p>\n<p>The stakes are especially high for companies engaged in transporting goods. Their executives contend that the Great Supply Chain Disruption is largely the result of labor shortages. Ports are overwhelmed and retail shelves are short of goods because the supply chain has run out of people willing to drive trucks and move goods through warehouses, the argument goes.<\/p>\n<p>Some labor experts challenge such claims, while reframing worker shortages as an unwillingness by employers to pay enough to attract the needed numbers of people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis shortage narrative is industry-lobbying rhetoric,\u201d said Steve Viscelli, an economic sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of \u201cThe Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream.\u201d \u201cThere is no shortage of truck drivers. These are just really bad jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A day spent wandering the Home Delivery World trade show inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center revealed how supply chain companies are pursuing automation and flexible staffing as antidotes to rising wages. They are eager to embrace robots as an alternative to human workers. Robots never get sick, not even in a pandemic. They never stay home to attend to their children.<\/p>\n<p>A large truck painted purple and white occupied a prime position on the showroom floor. It was a driverless delivery vehicle produced by Gatik, a Silicon Valley company that is running 30 of them between distribution centers and Walmart stores in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.<\/p>\n<p>Here was the fix to the difficulties of trucking firms in attracting and retaining drivers, said Richard Steiner, Gatik\u2019s head of policy and communications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not quite as appealing a profession as it once was,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re able to offer a solution to that trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nearby, an Israeli start-up company, SafeMode, touted a means to limit the notoriously high turnover plaguing the trucking industry. The company has developed an app that monitors the actions of drivers \u2014 their speed, the abruptness of their braking, their fuel efficiency \u2014 while rewarding those who perform better than their peers.<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s founder and chief executive, Ido Levy, displayed data captured the previous day from a driver in Houston. The driver\u2019s steady hand at the wheel had earned him an extra $8 \u2014 a cash bonus on top of the $250 he typically earns in a day.<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<section class=\"css-ogeepl cards\" data-testid=\"cards\">\n<header class=\"css-1r4odp4\" data-testid=\"title-byline\">\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"css-18koak6\" data-testid=\"byline\"><span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<figure class=\"css-1lsois6\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/10\/business\/00truck-driver-burst1\/00truck-driver-burst1-blog480.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/10\/business\/00truck-driver-burst1\/00truck-driver-burst1-square640.jpg\"><\/picture><figcaption class=\"css-1w0ye4k\" data-testid=\"legend\"><span>George Etheredge for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The supply chain disruption has reminded the world of the economic centrality of <strong>long-haul trucking<\/strong>. But the life of a driver, hauling 53-foot trailers alone on open highways thousands of miles a month, isn\u2019t for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the facts \u2192<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<figure class=\"css-1lsois6\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/10\/business\/00truck-driver-burst2\/00truck-driver-burst2-blog480.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/10\/business\/00truck-driver-burst2\/00truck-driver-burst2-square640.jpg\"><\/picture><figcaption class=\"css-1w0ye4k\" data-testid=\"legend\"><span>George Etheredge for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The typical long-haul tractor-trailer driver registers <strong>400 to 700 miles a day<\/strong>, or about 125,000 miles a year. That\u2019s enough to circumnavigate the globe five times.<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<figure class=\"css-1lsois6\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/03\/business\/00truck-driver-burst3\/00truck-driver-burst3-blog480.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/03\/business\/00truck-driver-burst3\/00truck-driver-burst3-square640.jpg\"><\/picture><figcaption class=\"css-1w0ye4k\" data-testid=\"legend\"><span>George Etheredge for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The typical driver works 60 to 70 hours a week, including time waiting to load and unload, while spending <strong>300 days a year on the road<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<p>Only 7 percent of the 300,000 to 500,000 so-called over-the-road truck drivers in the United States are women. <\/p>\n<p>Companies have sought to recruit more women, whose numbers have increased in local driving jobs. But efforts to expand their ranks in long-haul driving have confronted <strong>persistent sexism and sexual harassment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<figure class=\"css-1lsois6\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/03\/business\/00truck-driver-burst4\/00truck-driver-burst4-blog480-v2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/02\/03\/business\/00truck-driver-burst4\/00truck-driver-burst4-square640-v2.jpg\"><\/picture><figcaption class=\"css-1w0ye4k\" data-testid=\"legend\"><span>George Etheredge for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The median annual pay for tractor-trailer drivers, who are usually paid by the mile, was about $47,000 as of May 2020. Since then, firms have raised pay while dispensing <strong>bonuses of up to $10,000 for new hires<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/16\/multimedia\/author-peter-s-goodman\/author-peter-s-goodman-thumbStandard-v2.png\"><\/picture><\/span><span><span>Peter S. Goodman<\/span><span>Riding shotgun between Missouri and Texas<\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<p>Trucks haul more than <strong>$10 trillion of American goods a year<\/strong>, or more than 70 percent of all products shipped in the United States by value. <\/p>\n<p>Without long-haul trucking and the people behind the wheel, huge enterprises like Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot simply could not function.<\/p>\n<p>When will the supply chain disruption end? Read <span>Peter S. Goodman\u2019s latest analysis<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/10\/06\/business\/00savannah-port-4\/00savannah-port-4-mediumSquare149.jpg\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/05\/27\/business\/00Shortages-1\/00Shortages-1-mediumSquare149.jpg\"><br \/>\nSource: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/09\/07\/business\/robots-automation-supply-chain.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The people running companies that deliver all manner of products gathered in Philadelphia last week to sift through the lessons of the mayhem besieging the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":129204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Supply Chain Broke. 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