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Clearly, automation will affect labor in 2025. But we maintain that when implemented well, automation elevates our employees and empowers our American workers to make U.S. businesses more competitive on the global stage.This is our why. Now Chang Robotics president, Kate McAfoose, will address the how. These are remarks she shared at a recent Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force quarterly meeting panel. New automation brings new challenges Yes, new challenges emerge with increased automation and digitalization. As an engineering firm, our company is coming from an engineering culture into companies ranging from manufacturing to warehousing, transportation, e-commerce, healthcare, and government spaces. Many are Fortune 500; some are smaller, but the challenges they face are the same: They want to maintain staffing from within their regions, but they must be sure theyre meeting quality requirements and regulatory benchmarks. They want to build a resilient supply chain within the U.S. So how do they transition manual workers to jobs informed by digital technologies? Smart technologies and asking the right questions As part of our robotic solutions, we integrate smart sensors, internet of technology (IoT) platforms, data collection, and analysis. We also provide C-suites with a dashboard to track key metrics, and identify areas where performance may be lacking. The dashboard answers questions such as Are we maintaining uptime? Are we meeting production requirements? Are the quality measurements in line? Perhaps the client needs to improve operational efficiency to maintain profitability. In healthcare, nursing staff may be burned out due to a shortage, leading to physical exhaustion or extended shifts. Or a government facility might be readyor requiredto transition to autonomous shuttles. In all cases, the process involves finding the repetitive tasks that are not necessarily high skilled, then finding ways to automate those functions. Now the challenge is to upskill the staff and operators to new trades as were implementing the systems. Training the trainers is key Our company has a philosophy called train the trainer. As we implement new technology, we walk side by side with the operators for roughly 3-6 months. We make sure they understand and can operate the system; then we help them champion the system. In addition to the new level of employment, they earn the metaphorical badge of honor for having learned a new trade. We focus on empowering employees who can go home and say, My job is cool. I get to work with robots. Its not a situation of humans being replaced by robots, but in positioning them with collaborative robots that can drive efficiency and quality but cannot function without human interaction. If we implement the change in this way, everyone wins. A new world, with room for many How many people go through high school thinking, I want to specialize in goods movement or I want to work in automated transport? This is not a career path people have considered as a cool future role. But as these functions become better understood, the respect for their power will grow. There will still be a range of skilled and lower-skilled positions in the automated workforce. More positions will naturally focus on the maintenance and planning of the automated facilities. People will be required to perform maintenance and testing functions and to plan and maintain the spare parts inventory. These roles are vital to the operations success and will naturally gain a much bigger seat at the organizational table. Automation also applies to quality control. For example, if youre automating plasticware production, the utensils must come off the line cleanly, with no excess edges. The moment one piece fails to meet quality standards, it can cause a backup in the entire line, leading to a shutdown and requiring manual labor to resolve the issue. If youre operating with a smaller staff, youll need to pull workers from other areas, further slowing down production. Everyone involved will continually learn and adapt. Jobs remain, but skillsets are shifting It’s critical to avoid the assumption that automation leads to job reduction. Its a drive for as much production and quality enhancement as possible, but it will require a specialized team to achieve. Ideally, its the same team you already have, but differently trained. Traditionally, manual warehouse labor roles have very high turnover. After 6 months, many workers feel the job is repetitive and unappealing, or they leave to avoid night shifts or seek higher pay elsewhere. When this happens, the training investment is lost, and the next employee must be trained. However, when automation is implemented effectively, the need for manual labor decreases. Ideally, this reduction can occur through natural attritionwhen an employee moves on rather than advancing, the company may not need to hire a replacement. Automation can streamline roles that involve heavy lifting, high workplace injury risk, and increased burnout or boredom. People will leave less often. Effective automation can reward companies and workers in new ways. Technology for a bright future What does this mean for our childrens future? Kate has a child in kindergarten right now. I have no idea what she will do. Maybe shell pursue data science or data analysis, but the truth is, the roles of the future most likely dont even exist yet. But they will be necessary. And so will she. We will continually need to strive for the right decisions and balance, with a focus on innovation and action. This is how the next generation of companiesand employeescan continue to win. Matthew Chang is founder and Kate McAfoose is president of Chang Robotics.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Sterile, isolating, and stressful: Todays hospitals can kindle deep discomfort. Because they must be designed adequately for everyone, theyre designed perfectly for no one. So, what would our healthcare experience look like if physical hospitals were to disappear altogether? Artificial intelligence that is generative, predictive, and integrated, combined with the power of edge computing in every background device, will transform our very notion of hospitals. Healthcare will become a lifestyle so seamlessly woven into our daily experience that it will be invisible. Why is this the future of healthcare? The trends are already apparent: Evolving economics: As baby boomers transition to Medicare, millennials, Gen X and Gen Z are emerging as the primary healthcare consumers. These groups place an emphasis on convenience and personalization, and this social shift is influencing how we access care. Modern living: Biometric data collection is being increasingly integrated into our homes and daily routines, and predictive AI is streamlining diagnostics and preventing diseases. Converging technologies: Healthcare delivery has traditionally required specialized devices for every test and procedure, but the limitations of cost and size are fading. Advances in computation will converge functionalities, revolutionizing the patient experience in the process. Strategies for success In light of these trends, my firm has recently explored strategies for success in a changing healthcare landscape. They reflect our belief in a gradual transition toward decentralized healthcare and the integration of AI technology, celebrating our gradual societal progression towards an improved future, rather than a utopia that appears overnight. Here are some of these strategies. Lean into wearable technology. Soon, health data will be paired with pattern-recognition AI to identify and predict all risk factors for disease. This is a future inflection point where almost all healthcare becomes preventative medicine. For example, instead of learning about our heart disease after a cardiac event, AI will accurately warn us of our impending heart attack decades before it happens. Treat mental health as a community endeavor. The human body emits numerous indicators of psychological stress: elevated heart rate, tense muscles, and insomniawhich can be read by advanced biometric devices like an open book to our minds. Combined with large language model and diffusion model AI, a radical change in behavioral health could be at our fingertips. With AI-driven behavioral medicine available anywhere, anytime, communities could invest in public infrastructurelike augmenting parks to combine mental health with public green spaceto increase accessibility and fight social stigma. Repurpose obsolete infrastructure: By 2051, gas stations may be obsolete, and diagnostic equipment that is expensive today will be cheaper, smaller, and more powerful. Repurposing existing gas stationsand other outdated infrastructureinto neighborhood health stations could efficiently disperse essential health services throughout communities. Create personalized care environments: Unbound by location, cost and data availability, we can enjoy more personalized healthcare. For example, combining a labor and delivery room with augmented reality will make birth more comfortable by bridging the personal environment of a home birth with the medical sophistication of a specialty clinic. Floor-to-ceiling digital screens that respond to cortisol levels to create a calming atmosphere while displaying critical health information would have positive health impacts and improve patient satisfaction. Integrate diagnostic screening into the home: Households will become data collection centers and bathrooms can become labs of the future by integrating AI into existing buildings. For example, imagine household appliances that track the type of food you keep on hand as a marker of your overall health or screen your biowaste for signs of sickness in real time. Your own digital health avatar will be updated every time you cook a meal or brush your teeth. Today, a visit to the hospital entails finding a place to park in a busy lot, picking the right door to enter, and winding your way through confusing corridors past services you dont need, and ride elevators with people who cough without covering their mouths. Designers and architects have an opportunity to design a better way of doing things. Its a safe bet the future of healthcare will be a messy evolution of technology, culture, and economy. Markets are demanding more personalized on-demand service, technology is getting smaller and cheaper every day, and AI continues to advance. As designers, we believe this leaves us free to envision healthcare first and foremost as experiences rather than buildings or places. By embracing solutions that are opportunistic and incremental, we can create a future where healthcare is invisible and omnipresent. As we move into a future where technology will diminish the constraining power of location, cost and data, designers must resolve to increase our commitment to human flourishing. We must work together to deliver healthcare that delights. Mike Sewell is director of innovation at Gresham Smith.
Category:
E-Commerce
Which came first: the up-for-grabs blame over inflation or the meme about it? Either way, both have lately caused a stir on social media, where news about rising economic anxiety is now often yoked to three cheeky little words: Trump take egg. One of the first major political memes to emerge on Bluesky in the Trump 2.0 era, Trump take egg, is a pithy, grammatically fraught way to assign ownership over a leading economic hardship. It can be found accompanying photos of empty store shelves, astronomically high prices, and signage about egg rationingthe kind of photos that haunted Bidens entire inflation-ravaged presidency. Egg-ception The idea for the meme hatched with Daytime Emmy-winning editor for TV and film Michael Tae Sweeney, who made the first recorded Trump take egg post on February 4. Sweeney got the inspiration for it not online but out in the wild, where he witnessed firsthand the sweeping panic over rising egg prices. During a weekday morning trip to a Costco in Southeast San Diego, he noticed the vibes were off as soon as he walked through the door. Every single cart besides mine already had two cartons of 60 eggs in it, the most you were allowed to buy in one trip, he recalls. I bee-lined to the dairy section and was lucky to get some of the last eggs available that day. Other guys were pulling out their phones to take pictures of the empty egg case. It felt like it was all anyone wanted to talk aboutthe cashiers, the other grocery shoppers, my neighbors, the security guards at my kids’ daycare. That was weeks ago, and it’s only gotten worse since then. Indeed, egg prices have soared over the past few weeks, as farmers have had to kill more and more of their chickens in an effort to contain an ongoing outbreak of avian flu. The average wholesale price for a dozen large white eggs broke the $8 threshold on Thursday, a new record, up from $6.55 on January 24. Although it may scan as goofy, Trump take egg is an organic, free-range rallying cry, holding the presidents feet to the fire for his lapsed pledge to bring down food prices on Day Oneas he attempts to shift blame for it again and again. The message is starting to spread too. Not only has Trump take egg taken over Bluesky, where theres a dedicated account reposting some of its usage, its migrated to X and has also begun to hit TikTok. A meme takes flight Though the bird flu outbreak may have preceded Trumps term, some official acts on his watchin particular, the Department of Government Efficiency accidentally firing the USDA workers tasked with curbing bird flulikely did not help matters. Because the meme caught fire during a series of weeks in which egg prices soared, social media users now had a shared vocabulary to call out Trump for firing those workers in real time. And though Sweeney has played ringleader to his own creation, posting it alongside egg news as often as possible, Trump take egg quickly took on a life of its own. Within days, random Bluesky users began tagging him in replies to their posts about eggs (and who took them). Some even started using the same cadence to assign blame for other consequences of Trumps presidency, posting comments such as Trump cause traffic after the president sought to end New York Citys congestion pricing program earlier this week. The message seems to be resonating because it applies a refreshing light touch to a serious issue. So far, a lot of political and financial news in 2025 has had a bleak aura for many Americans, and tends to hit social media with doomsday gravity. Slapping Trump take egg on an entire segment of current events, though, has the disarming effect of wearing Groucho glasses with a doctors smock. It also helps keep attention and ownership on a pressing issue during a chaotic time. Americans are angry and confused by the high price of eggs, understand it’s wrong, and understand that, on some level, Trump and the incompetent people running the country are responsible for it, Sweeney says. Being able to express all that real emotion in a tight three-word slogan just makes it easy for people, even if the slogan’s broken grammar is a little silly. Although for now, the message is mainly restricted to left-leaning Bluesky, the sentiment behind it seems to be taking hold all over. A new poll from the Washington Post and Ipsos released on Thursday shows 53% of Americans disapprove of Trumps handling of the economy, his worst economic numbers since 2017. Another poll released the same day, by CNN and SRSS, reveals 62% of respondents say the president has not gone far enough in trying to reduce prices. Despite Trumps efforts to deflect blame, it may now be harder than ever to wipe the egg off his face.
Category:
E-Commerce
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