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OT- Robots coming to McDonalds

Back in the day, most jobs at places like McDonalds were starter jobs filled by part-time teens and young adults just starting out. Most later moved on to better jobs or got promoted to manager.

Today unfortunately many people are stuck in such jobs as many of the better jobs were outsourced and cheap imported labor competes for what is left.

My work will probably be among the last to be lost to automation. While much of the grunt work is done by automated devices (giving me more time to post to PM :D) the design and setup of tests still requires the flexibility of a human due to each product or investigation having unique requirements and because much involves prototypes.

In spite of that I have long held sympathy for those in jobs threatened by automation. For years I avoided self-service gas pumps even though they cost less and I still avoid automated checkouts. Occasionally at Home Depot or elsewhere an employee will come along and "teach" me how to use them which I tolerate because it involves a human employee. Apparently I am a poor student because I "forget" how to use them the next time and get in line for a cashier.

I haven't visited a McDonalds type business in years and if a coffee shop went with automation only I would drive out of my way to find one with humans.

Be very careful what you wish for. There is a price to be paid for all this convenience and I for one do not wish to be the last man working in a world of unemployed. It would not be fun and anyone in that position would likely be hated and envied.

This is one instance where I feel that countries like Denmark are smarter than us by paying lower end workers a living wage.
 
When they came for me

McCNCDonalds

Haven't heard too much about this.
New McDonald's In Phoenix Run Entirely By Robots - News Examiner - Examine Your World

Still no actual video of the robots and/or the automation itself.
Should be interesting. Hopefully they will be able to program
the machinery so as the condiments get placed evenly around the bun, with pickles spaced out evenly +/-.010 instead of a gob or smear of mustard and 3 pickle slices in a clump 'somewhere' on the bun.
I also envision eventual precision even placement of sour cream on my Taco at Taco Belle. Not a gob at one end.
CNC food preparation by machines with training and intelligence. That never leave so they never have to 'not' show up. Order by customer input at a touch screen, instead of trying to hear the person behind the counter that looks half asleep and talks too quiet to be heard....even whey I say WHAT? I can't HEAR YOU. Never ordering cheesburgers at the drive thru only to find you got McChicken instead. And no burning hourly wages during slow periods of the day. What a concept.

WHY would McDonalds DO that to all the people protesting for the minimum wage increase??
Why do we have CNC machines instead of manual...

When MacDonalds is totally automated, manufacturing will not be far behind.20 years from now machinests will be the blacksmiths of the 21st century. Pretty much gone except for shops like I read about here..what do you think your kids will do for a living? What do you think their standard of living will be? Real robots are just around the corner! Grumpy Old Man
 
Facial recognition software will scan your face and eyes as you look at the menus and already know what the order is going to be with a high degree of probability. When your kids are born and have state issued computer chips connected to their nervous systems, the order process will be more efficient.

I could care less since I don't go there. Beware of those nuggets, plasticizers as one ingredient? Maybe not now but in the past... The body doesn't know what to do with that so it just gets stored.
 
When MacDonalds is totally automated, manufacturing will not be far behind.20 years from now machinests will be the blacksmiths of the 21st century. Pretty much gone except for shops like I read about here..what do you think your kids will do for a living? What do you think their standard of living will be? Real robots are just around the corner! Grumpy Old Man

Uhh, I hate to tell you but manufacturing is way more automated than McDonalds or any other food-service business. Most of us have been making parts practically untouched by human hands for decades. We haven't been blacksmiths for a long while now. In general we are among the principal consumers of robots and robotic equipment. We're who they make that stuff for. Get a grip, dude.
 
Uhh, I hate to tell you but manufacturing is way more automated than McDonalds or any other food-service business. Most of us have been making parts practically untouched by human hands for decades. We haven't been blacksmiths for a long while now. In general we are among the principal consumers of robots and robotic equipment. We're who they make that stuff for. Get a grip, dude.

I agree, out of between about 40 and 60+ manufacturing steps - depending on product - in our manufacturing stream, each part is touched by human hands only 4 - 5 times - again depending on product and all of those handling events are in-stream visual inspections for flaws that cannot be seen reliably by a camera.
 
20 years out

I agree, out of between about 40 and 60+ manufacturing steps - depending on product - in our manufacturing stream, each part is touched by human hands only 4 - 5 times - again depending on product and all of those handling events are in-stream visual inspections for flaws that cannot be seen reliably by a camera.

You don't get it..40 years ago those 40 to60 steps were performed 1 or 2 at a time by a lot of guys..as you say human hands are minimally used..take this trend 20 years out and you won't need a self driving car to drive to the shop...not saying there won't be any jobs, just that they will be different. There will always be home shops and manual machines, racers and tinkers..this is beyond shops and restaurants..self driving cars don't have accidents, no insurance, no body work, no truck drivers...ect...a very different world is ahead...don't worry about wefare people on this thread...THINK..grumpy old man
 
I think the whole drift toward widespread drug usage ....and hypnotic computer games , will fill the gap we will have......... whole generations of ppl whe have never worked for a living, and EXPECT to be fed and housed and medicated and entertained by the goverment. The drugs annd comuter games, and for those who have real get up and go there is......gambling. People occupied this way dont foment rovolution....they support big mama government.

Dave
 
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U.S. restaurant operators would probably not replace workers with robots if they had to pay the $15 hourly wage demanded by protesters, McDonald's (MCD, +0.19%) Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook told shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday.
 
I guess they would need to hire someone to put the food into the machines...

This is what all these crybabies get for demanding an increase in the minimum wage. There should be NO minimum wage.


Well I'll the drive to have a minimum wage is motivated by the instinctual drive to survive. That is normal the new normal would be automation. What do we do with all the unemployed people? Also only people who earn a living and get paid can buy the food produced and sold using automation. It seems to be inherently unsustainable really.
 
I agree fully - the useless buggers who eat at McD's should be given the opportunity to gorge themselves to death on that swill at a minimal cost.

Ah well I have actually worked fast food before when I was young. It was fun. They paid me money until the time came to move on. It seems I like machining better unless I am hungry and need to make myself a sandwich. Who would agree with me if I said I trust people more than machines and it would likely bore me if I did buy a burger at a fully automated burger place. If it achieves better product at lower cost it is easy to see where that will go. I don't know about printer burgers though that shocks me a bit.
 
I think the whole drift toward widespread drug usage ....and hypnotic computer games , will fill the gap we will have......... whole generations of ppl whe have never worked for a living, and EXPECT to be fed and housed and medicated and entertained by the goverment. The drugs annd comuter games, and for those who have real get up and go there is......gambling. People occupied this way dont foment rovolution....they support big mama government.

Dave

Expect or not...when they get hungry an cold they'll break things.
 
Automation will come to McDonals, etc. at some point.

Also, automation will come to US agribusiness jobs, employing iirc 2 M people in the US, many of them undocumented.
In the EU, almost all of those jobs are already automated.

This is both good and bad.
If the society, the US in this case, promotes education and better jobs, most people then get more educated, better paid, jobs.
Serving, installing, programming the robots etc. - just like machinists now do with CNC.

Medium-term, imho 10-15 years, the possibility of "good jobs" ie blue-collar without tech skills at good pay, is essentially zero.
Some small vertical-market specialities will remain, for a short while, like underwater welding, etc.

McDonalds etc., mining, farming, truck driving, commercial shipping, taxi, bookkeeping, accountants, (lawyers), real estate agents, parcel delivery will all be automated 90%++.
Most machining by gross weight will be near 100% automated (ex special items, prototypes).
This is both good and bad.

What will we all do ?
I have no idea.

Resource-scarcity will mostly disappear .. and most people can have decent typical consumer goods free, more or less.
There are excellent economic arguments why most stuff will be (near?) free, for all.

Then the cost of seaside views/chalets/villas will go way up, as will pay for the top 1% of innovators, planners, business people.
We are now at about 1% of the S-curve for automated/efficient manufacturing of goods and services.

And it only takes 10-11 years or so to get to 90% of an s-curve, or so, e. new york transport with horses vs cars, or us railways, or the internet, or cellphones, are all good examples of the same or similar 10-year cycle of global-domination-timeframe.

The chinese consumers, and indian consumers, and african consumers, will get "rich" in consumer appliances, and better food, better medical care, pumped out by fabs at 100x current speed or efficiency per person employed.
They will also get more educated, and have less babies, as has happened in every single society always, given more material wealth and education.
 
My concern about automation taking over jobs, is that as an end game the ownership of the automated labour will be concentrated to a few people, reducing social mobility, the american/capitalist dream that hard work can drag you out of poverty will go up in smoke, as the reality will become that unless you have the capital to invest becuase your mummy and daddy were rich, you can't get on the automation ladder, and instead have to try to do things with manual labour, which will drive a commercial disadvantage to any start up or entrepreneur who doesn't have a few hundred thousand to sink into automation set up.

I am sure other opportunities will emerge, but ultimately unless the ownership of robots is in some way limited economy will face some very interesting challenges as costs drop due to lower labour costs, but reduced income reduces demand.
 
My concern about automation taking over jobs, is that as an end game the ownership of the automated labour will be concentrated to a few people, reducing social mobility, the american/capitalist dream that hard work can drag you out of poverty will go up in smoke, as the reality will become that unless you have the capital to invest becuase your mummy and daddy were rich, you can't get on the automation ladder, and instead have to try to do things with manual labour, which will drive a commercial disadvantage to any start up or entrepreneur who doesn't have a few hundred thousand to sink into automation set up.

I am sure other opportunities will emerge, but ultimately unless the ownership of robots is in some way limited economy will face some very interesting challenges as costs drop due to lower labour costs, but reduced income reduces demand.

One wonders how many of the people here worried or making predictions have actually built and installed a robot (or a few hundred) or any automation.
Or how many have read and understand a monthly P&L for a McDonalds.
A robotic Mc'ds sounds like a good idea until you know a few things about both. Then not so much.
Bob
 








 
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