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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

#81

Post by tim333 »

ams6110 wrote: post #35
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.

Kenya's GDP's growing at 5.8%/year. In 30 years that would be 5x. All Africa's developing fast at the moment. A lot of it's probably down to modern communications. Africa used to be really cut off. Now they've mostly got cellphones etc.

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

#82

Post by deedub »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #18
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…

I recently came across this video of a color sensing tomato sorting machine. https://youtu.be/j4RWJTs0QCk Really shifted my mental ranking of where agricultural processing was at.

About 20 years ago (Holy shit!) I worked in a potato processing facility. They had multiple belts all about 8' wide that ran through a machine that scanned 100s / 1000's of dehydrated potato flakes for quality every second and could hit a specific flake with a burst of air to blow it off one line and into another. 20 yrs ago. I believe they went under / were bought up by a more modern company 5 or so yrs ago.

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

#83

Post by chris_wot »

icebraining wrote: post #36
chris_wot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case, Australia should soon have a large manufacturing base.

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

#84

Post by alex- »

> "...can make as many shirts per hour as about 17 humans"

Surprised they are looking at it per hour. Presumably the automation could run for close to 24 hours a day, whereas the human workforce could not.

So each of these units could replace 51 workers? (3 rotations of 17 workers each doing 8 hours a day). That's before considering the human workforce generally requires 2 days a week off.

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

#85

Post by rtpg »

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…

considering the low price of the shirts, how do you cover the capital costs of the robots?

I'm having a hard time imagining the robots putting out 6 digits-worth of shirts per robot to cover the costs?

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

#86

Post by dang »

mantas wrote: post #65
koops wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer.

Yes, führer

First, this kind of post will get you banned from HN if you do it repeatedly, so please don't.

Second, would you please not use HN for political or ideological battle? You appear to have been doing that repeatedly and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#87

Post by photojosh »

bmcusick wrote: post #20
HillaryBriss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Robot production lines need robot technicians to support them. I doubt you'll find many of those in Bangladesh any time soon.

IIRC most of the world's hard drives are made in Thailand, not too far away. They found them somewhere. :)

And one robot replaces 17 workers, it's probably around 1 robot tech to support 10-20 machines.

According to these stats [1], in Bangladesh there's 4800 factories with around 725 workers on average. So that would be 40 machines with one worker each to supervise and 3-4 robot techs. 5 people to replace 725!

[1] http://www.waronwant.org/sweatshops-bangladesh

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

#89

Post by flukus »

gozur88 wrote: post #55
pwg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That issue becomes a logistics issue. You can pay one worker in Bangladesh to oversee the machine, or you can pay one worker in the US (or Europe) to oversee the machine. But, if your target market is US (or Europe) you've got shipping costs to get your finished shirts to the US (or European) market. If the machine is in the US (or Europe) those shipping costs are substantially lower (and with much less latency). The…

I remember reading an article on shipping, and they claimed shipping costs for a t-shirt from China to the US are something around $0.02. I'm thinking the biggest advantage to outsourcing t-shirts is in a lot of places you can dump used dyes into the local river instead of dealing with rules on toxic waste.

I assume shipping the raw materials (wool and cotton) to Bangladesh would cost more than the shirt on the return trip.

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

#90

Post by mantas »

dang wrote: post #86
mantas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, führer

First, this kind of post will get you banned from HN if you do it repeatedly, so please don't. Second, would you please not use HN for political or ideological battle? You appear to have been doing that repeatedly and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The top level comment I replied to went on the political discourse and I just carried on from there. Did he get a warning as well?

Personally I'd be happy to have less political HN. But as long as there're top level political comments.. It's too hard to resist :) I believe mods could easily mega-downvote such comments. Yet particular comment I replied to seem to be upvoted?

As for my later comment, are jokes not allowed on HN anymore? I got grammar-nazi'd, I replied back with a matching joke.

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