[scarmig]

Let's assume that you would need 1000 machines to have as much throughput as 4000 people.

WAG, but I'd wager that each of those machines would cost $500k.

That means 100 million in immediate outlays. WAG 2: fuel/electricity/maintenance is $200/month, and you need a team of 20 engineers to watch over them at $10k/engineer/month. So recurring costs come to $400k.

Which brings us to: 100M/1.3M = 77 months, or between 6 and 7 years.

That, however, doesn't take into account the opportunity cost of the initial $100,000,000 outlay. That brings it up to around a decade.

So, a decade to break even.

[jfoutz]

Labor costs are likely double, if not more, than what i've estimated. overtime + insurance + drug testing + security + all the other crap i'm forgetting.

[intended]

Well if you treat people as human machines, remove unionizing ability and what have you, then you can bring yourself to competitive levels with China, which has kinda made a very persuasive point that human robots are cheaper than mechanical ones.

The only issue with labor of course is the so called 'managing' aspect of it, which covers things like quality of life. Robots don't have and will never complain about, while being able to do tasks at a level that most humans wont ever be able to.

[ghshephard]

Re: " China, which has kinda made the point that human robots are cheaper than mechanical ones."

Not for long.

"The China Business News on Monday quoted Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou as saying the company planned to use 1 million robots within three years, up from about 10,000 robots in use now and an expected 300,000 next year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-foxconn-robots-...

[intended]

The point still stands. It may (should) change in the future as people start asserting their rights. (I have seen the article before, its Foxconn currently, but labor prices and further opportunities haven't reached a point where you can safely bleed off the population away from manufacturing just yet.)

At the same time though, it shows that as long as you have people who have no option, you can use them to easily produce more value than robots at similar costs. Which is what the Mother Jones article is basically about.

Also, its worth remembering that those robots are also going to be used for capacity expansion, while keeping cheap tractable labour.

TLDR: Improving standards of living will make robotics more competitive, unless there are sufficient people who have no other option but to compete with machines.

[lwat]

Still, most companies just do not have a $100 million to change to a robotic system.

[ajkessler]

Most companies don't have 4000 employees, or need 1000 robots. Like every business, you add capacity as necessary. Diapers.com started with one mom and minivan.

[JohnsonB]

This article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/09/smallbusiness/kiva_robots/in... says that 1000 robots costs $15-20 million, not the $500 million that 500k a piece would run. Also what is there to indicate such a hefty need for engineering oversight? 20 engineers constantly overseeing the machines sounds like they are either constantly breaking down, or need a significant amount of custom programming per unit as upkeep, both of which just sounds like a quality control issue on Kiva's side. It makes sense that there's a lot of initial planning/programming for each installation, but I'd expect it to be mostly self-running after that. I would be curious about the energy needs per unit, though. They seem to be carrying around more weight per package shipped than with a human picker carrying just what goes in one package, but then again their use of energy might be more efficient than humans.

[sokoloff]

1000 robots needing just 30 minutes of preventative maintenance per week is 500 hours of PM a week. That sounds like about the amount of PM a staff of 20 engineers can supply, once you account for admin, PTO, training, travel between robots, and doing the actual work.

Engineer does not solely mean "one who creates software".

[Game_Ender]

The word you are looking for is "technician".

[scarmig]

Well, everyone's an engineer nowadays. My company has "custom service engineers." =)

[Intermernet]

I may be old school, but I don't regard anyone as an engineer without a degree in engineering.

Other wise, they're a hacker ;-)

[schiffern]

>I would be curious about the energy needs per unit, though.

An 180 lb person speed walking at 5 mph burns 650 Calories/hr. That's 80¢/shift in electricity.

But that's not the big savings. Humans need lights and air-conditioning – robots don't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0#t=5m40s

[ars]

> Let's assume that you would need 1000 machines to have as much throughput as 4000 people.

I think your assumption is way off. For one each machine works 3 times as long as a person (24 hours a day vs 8).