US port workers and operators reach deal to end East Coast strike immediately (msn.com)
intercst
2 Likes
Both sides said in a statement that they would extend their master contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all outstanding issues.
Management needs time. It is unclear what AI and robots can do. It might not be much. The tasks need delineation.
Robots do pretty well for Amazon. Can they find a specified container and load or unload it on a truck bed? Does the robot need a driver?
Can a robot load or unload a container from a ship?
From nine years ago:
The massive cranes that sit at the Port of Oakland are veritable money-printing machines. As ships coming from Asia dock in the San Francisco Bay, these industrial behemoths quickly usher goods-bearing containers off the deck and onto land. Modern container ships are filled with thousands of containers. At peak efficiency, a single crane can remove about 40 of these per hour — and for each one they unload, companies moving containerized cargo are charged a terminal handling fee of around $300. But in many ways, the Port of Oakland, and most American ports in general, are some of the most technologically antiquated in the world. …
A port terminal recently opened in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands tells a different story: almost every part of the process of unloading containers is handled by software, and office workers remotely control the cranes over their computers…
The machinery of these three components (gantry cranes, transport vehicles, and stacking cranes) can be operated either by humans or software. In Oakland, like the rest of the United States, all three are operated by humans. But the reality is that software automation can not only make this process faster and safer, but available at a lower variable cost…
By this (admittedly rough) calculation, cranes in Rotterdam are almost 80% more productive than in Oakland.
DB2
7 Likes