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New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

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Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#31

Post by [deleted] »

otakucode wrote: post #23
bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

Tech is cheap and ubiquitous. Perhaps people in SE Asia and Africa might want to invest in a T-shirt sewing robot and an Internet connection such that they can run absolute circles around every major developed-world company by keeping their overhead low. Those multi-hundred-million-dollar CEOs from those American (or Chinese) companies are a tremendous drain. And that's not even to mention their absurd gigantic offic…

[deleted]

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#32

Post by snrplfth »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

You could say that about basically every labour-saving device though. Tractors, earth-moving equipment, container ships, whatever. And even textiles are almost wholly automated now - lots of textiles are grown or spun, woven, dyed and printed almost entirely by automated machines - robots, in effect. Final assembly is in many cases the first time a given piece of textile has been touched by human hands. So why is the automation of this final step going to be the thing that prevents countries from climbing the "development ladder"?

When cellphones became affordable, it didn't mean that countries without decent landline networks couldn't "move up the ladder". They just jumped straight to the more advanced technology. If higher-productivity technologies are available, and are cheaper than using scarce human labour, then you use it. More productivity is not somehow a bad thing.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#33

Post by chris_wot »

otakucode wrote: post #23
bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

Tech is cheap and ubiquitous. Perhaps people in SE Asia and Africa might want to invest in a T-shirt sewing robot and an Internet connection such that they can run absolute circles around every major developed-world company by keeping their overhead low. Those multi-hundred-million-dollar CEOs from those American (or Chinese) companies are a tremendous drain. And that's not even to mention their absurd gigantic offic…

That requires infrastructure. Here's the thing though: if you can do it dirt cheap overseas and cut out labour, then you can do it dirt cheap pretty much anywhere.

Offshoring really gets done to reduce costs via cheaper wages. If you take out the wages, then offshoring doesn't look as good as it once was.

The issue is that white collar work is now the stuff that gets offshored. But then I see the absolute dire service many outsourced companies provide and I often wonder how much the business loses because of it.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#34

Post by bmcusick »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

I can't quite decide which will be the tipping point for robots replacing humans: Agriculture, food service, or garments. The first seems ripe (no pun intended) for disruption but apparently often requires human skill to identify products. The second seems more likely, as fast food is mostly automated with some human intervention; coupled with self-checkout technology in any language, and it might work. Garments, how…

All three over the next 10 years.

Agriculture: Computer vision is improving really fast. The technology that Amazon is developing for picking products at its warehouses will also allow them to pick apples.

Food Service: The real killer app here is that special-purpose automated kitchens (like the ones that produce only fresh hamburgers) will combine with drone and self-driving car delivery to make meal deliver 1/4 the price of restaurants today.

Garments: The technology in this article means that production in the EU/USA will cost about the same as Indonesia or Kenya, and the EU/USA labor pool will have more of the high-skill technicians you need to service the robots. Combined with shorter supply chains and faster time to market and you'll see garment manufacturing becoming "local but automated" in most markets.

Depending on the supply of "sewbot technicians" the USA might even start exporting clothing to Latin America or wherever.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#35

Post by ams6110 »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

Kenya hasn't developed yet, why do we think it will?

Putting it another way, Kenya's development has not been held back by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt government and misguided go-gooderism.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#36

Post by icebraining »

chris_wot wrote: post #33
otakucode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is cheap and ubiquitous. Perhaps people in SE Asia and Africa might want to invest in a T-shirt sewing robot and an Internet connection such that they can run absolute circles around every major developed-world company by keeping their overhead low. Those multi-hundred-million-dollar CEOs from those American (or Chinese) companies are a tremendous drain. And that's not even to mention their absurd gigantic offic…

That requires infrastructure. Here's the thing though: if you can do it dirt cheap overseas and cut out labour, then you can do it dirt cheap pretty much anywhere. Offshoring really gets done to reduce costs via cheaper wages. If you take out the wages, then offshoring doesn't look as good as it once was. The issue is that white collar work is now the stuff that gets offshored. But then I see the absolute dire servic…

Lots of stuff are made in China due to proximity to resources, not just cheap labor. T-shirts don't qualify, though - the US is actually the largest cotton producer.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#37

Post by icebraining »

elevensies wrote: post #17
dannysu wrote: post #6

This reminds me about when Bill Gates make that comment saying that raising the minimal wage could make the cost trade-off of investing in automation worthwhile [1]. On one hand, people need living wages. But on the other hand, I think we're witnessing what Bill Gates is talking about here. What's the solution? Gates has floated the idea of taxing robots. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking…

People with immense wealth (Gates, Buffet, ...) are great at coming up with innovative tax schemes to tax anything other than wealth.

Actually, Buffet's idea for quite a while has been that he and the other billionaires should be taxed more.

It may be just PR, but that's a different goalpost.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#38

Post by Retric »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #12
Symbiote wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says the cost in Bangladesh is 22 cents. That is surely close enough, after taking into account transport and lead time, that factories in Bangladesh should be worried.

how much will the human labor cost per shirt be once these automatic t-shirt machines are moved to Bangladesh?

Depends on the price of the machine. You don't want to place expensive factories in unstable locations.

China / Mexico are generally considered safe bets compared to much of the world and also have cheap labor.

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#39

Post by Fezzik »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

The Economist just had a great article about the process of moving a poor country up the ladder, focusing on Bangladesh. I thought it was a good read, and it touches on the roll of textile manufacturing and the related infrastructure that helps boost an economy.

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21565617-bangladesh-...

Re: New t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers

#40

Post by mankash666 »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

$0.33 per shirt, anywhere in the world, is nearly as cheap as the cheapest sweatshop markets. I expect most commentary will look at this using a US vs China thing, but I'm more worried about SE Asia and Africa. They need to climb up the development ladder that China's already 1/2-way up. Say what you will about clothing and sneaker sweatshops, but they were a tried and tested method for building up the basics of an i…

Kenya will develop by investing in it's people's education and economy. Sweatshop as a vehicle of development is like "war for peace"
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