> Just a few humans were present to deal with a handful of tasks -- two to feed bare motherboards to the line, and two to package the finished consoles.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but, especially the first task, seems rather trivial compared to what they achieved with their robots? Even the second one, If I remember correctly Amazon does/did this manually because every single package is different and no robot flexible enough, but I assume in Sonys case packages are all exactly the same. Doesn't sound a whole lot harder than plugging in the cables.
So why wouldn't they automatize those steps as well?
Loading into the sort of packaging used for electronics is definitely hard to automate. For low margin products it used to be universal that boxed items were manufactured where labor was cheap, and that's for very simple to load items.
Automation is improving at a rapid rate though. I've definitely seen automated boxers for some simple to load items start to show up.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but, especially the first task, seems rather trivial compared to what they achieved with their robots? Even the second one, If I remember correctly Amazon does/did this manually because every single package is different and no robot flexible enough, but I assume in Sonys case packages are all exactly the same. Doesn't sound a whole lot harder than plugging in the cables.
So why wouldn't they automatize those steps as well?