Amazon hid its safety crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#141

Post by alexvoda » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #137

gamblor956 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it? Yes, I do. Because that is the choice they have actually made. What i suggested is SOP for Amazon's competitors and indeed the retail market as a whole due to product liability laws in the US and UK. Not hiring QC is therefore a deliberate choice. My guess would be that if you could actually…

> They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes How exactly would you do this? In the last year 3.4 billion items were sold by American SMBs alone on Amazon. That is 110 items per second. If you hired 25000 QC staffers working at perfect efficiency, they would need to each handle over 1 item per minute. And ensuring that something…

I call bullshit. Do not mislead. The 110 items per second is the wrong metric and you know it. You only need to review all items, not all transactions. I can not believe you did not know this. And you keep ignoring the fact that users can not report items as counterfeit. That is a change that can be made in one sprint (form workflow + localisation). Without proper data on what is counterfeit your legion of ML people will do nothing.

You are either willfully misleading in order to defend your employer or you drank too much kool-aid and are unable to escape the reality dispersion field.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#142

Post by Klinky » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #136

Klinky wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, because large scale lends itself to automation more easily, but even still, you have manual labor with unloading and loading, maintaining and reconfiguring the line, quality control, packaging, and delivery. A lot of these processes are not new, and have been around for decades. The McDonald's store doesn't have a machine make your hamburger, there is still significant manual labor involved, which hasn't rea…

Hm. I don't know. Bakeries for the buns are highly automated. The 'assembly' and packaging could be too, like for deep frozen pizza. Also Sri Racha helps with almost anything! ;> Have you ever tried to 'tune' a quarterpounder, double-cheese, or simple cheesburger with mild (green cap/Huy Fong alike) Sri Racha? Just a few small splotches.

There has been automation in factories, but the point is that the innovation hasn't continued, and that the automation seen in factories typically stays in factories, which require volume/scale. There have been "minor" incremental improvements over the years, but industrialized food production was heavily automated all the way back in the 50's. You simply cannot put a machine that pumps out 10,000 frozen pizzas an hour into a Domino's storefront, and when you scale it down, it becomes too costly, impractical, or the product quality is not the same as that desired. It's basically the "last mile" problem.

When we talk of burger-flipping robots replacing the McDonald's worker, the answer isn't "McDonald's is already highly automated", as they still have a huge number of employees doing manual labor at every store. There is no burger-flipping robot, and their factories featuring automation(as most factories have for decades) hasn't really changed the number of employees they need in each store.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#143

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #142

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I don't know. Bakeries for the buns are highly automated. The 'assembly' and packaging could be too, like for deep frozen pizza. Also Sri Racha helps with almost anything! ;> Have you ever tried to 'tune' a quarterpounder, double-cheese, or simple cheesburger with mild (green cap/Huy Fong alike) Sri Racha? Just a few small splotches.

There has been automation in factories, but the point is that the innovation hasn't continued, and that the automation seen in factories typically stays in factories, which require volume/scale. There have been "minor" incremental improvements over the years, but industrialized food production was heavily automated all the way back in the 50's. You simply cannot put a machine that pumps out 10,000 frozen pizzas an ho…

We seem to talk about different things, not understanding what each other is trying to say. Let me wind back to my initial question, and freely associate from there:

Yes, Yes! I do understand efficiencies of scale. I asked you because you said there are no ready made burgers, which are deep frozen, able to being warmed up again at the time of use by whatever means.

I questioned if that matters because there already refrigerated(although not deep frozen) burgers available in the supermarkets, so not a really long shelf life(I think about a week, have to recheck that next time in store), but who cares if the supply chain delivers?

I further question that this isn't fully automatable because almost fully robotic deep frozen pizza production does exist at scale in factories already in operation for a long time, to be pipelined into the fridges of supermarkets. Or the documentaries showing them in operation from the inside are fake news, but what do I know?

I don't see why that shouldn't be possible with burgers.

Btw. there is no need to flip anything in McD for the classics as I recall, with the exception of that McRib thing and something fishy. At least that was the case when I've been crew-trainer for about a year somewhere around 1988/1989. At that time we got the clamshell grills/BBQs which made flipping obsolete. Similar for the buns, 12 small or 6 large on a plate, to be put into some horizontal slot, toast, done.

Why McD doesn't produce deepfrozen stuff for supermarkets is their decision, not necessarily a technical one. Maybe they fear law-suits from their franchisees? Maybe it makes more economic sense for them to offer the "experience" and full menu all the time? Maybe they don't want to compete pricewise with alternative choices right next to them in the fridge? A (non-smart) fridge in the supermarket doesn't ask "Do you want fries with that?" (for now)

So that was that. Almost. Last mile...

Yes? As in deep frozen pizza from the supermarket/grocer. Be it by shopping in person, online, via phone, app, who cares?

You said NO!

I said BOO! :)

Are we clear now?