Category Archives: Technology

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January, 16, 2019:  

Following the announcement that Volkswagen America was going to be expanding its Chattanooga plant to build electric vehicles (EVs), President Trump was delighted. He tweeted: “Congratulations to Chattanooga and Tennessee on a job well done. A big win.”

It was a big win for the president, who invited the CEOs of VW, BMW, and other foreign car manufacturers to the White House in December to persuade them to invest more in the United States. At the same time VW made its announcement at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, BMW management announced its own expansion plans of its production facilities in the United States. With VW’s financial commitment of $800 million for Tennessee and BMW’s financial commitment of $600 million added to the $340 million VW announced last March for its Chattanooga facility, those two automakers are investing almost $2 billion in their U.S. automobile manufacturing plants. Their expansion plans will require more than 2,000 additional workers, adding to the already robust manufacturing resurgence taking place in the United States.

That resurgence has added nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs in just the last two years, the most in more than 20 years.

Following the announcement by VW’s CEO Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG, his American counterpart, Scott Keogh, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, added, “We could not be prouder to build the future of mobility here in the United States. We’re known as ‘the peoples’ car’ for a reason, and we plan to build EVs for millions, not millionaires.”

What Keogh didn’t say was that

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, October 19, 2018: 

Over the last two or three years, tens of thousands of people have watched YouTube videos (see Sources) of the unbelievable technology that companies like Amazon and British online grocery company Ocado are using to cut delivery costs and times for their customers. Each of Amazon’s “fulfillment centers” ships upwards of a million orders every single day, with nary a human in sight.

Give Amazon credit. It saw the technology it would need as far back as 2012 when they bought Kiva Systems, the developer of the little Kiva robots that look like oversized Roombas. Kiva was leasing their robots and their technology to companies like The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, and Saks 5^th Avenue. But when those leases ended, Amazon didn’t renew them. It wanted the Kiva technology for itself.

Today, in its more than 100 massive distribution or “fulfillment” centers, there are hundreds of thousands of Kiva robots doing the work humans used to do just a few years ago.

The million-square-foot fulfillment center in Baltimore is typical, as Christopher Mims explained in The Wall Street Journal:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 18, 2018:  

When Amazon, the largest Internet retailer in the world, purchased Kiva Systems in 2012, it paid almost a billion dollars for it; and it transformed, and continues to transform, the company. Amazon wanted the technology behind the Kiva robots that were previously being used by The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, and Saks 5th Avenue. When the contracts with those companies ran out Amazon didn’t renew them.

It wanted Kiva’s technology for itself.

Today, in its more than 100 massive distribution or “fulfillment” centers, there are hundreds of thousands of Kiva robots doing the work humans used to do just a few years ago. There are YouTube videos depicting this transformation from human “pickers” to robotic pickers.

The million-square-foot fulfillment center in Baltimore is typical, as Christopher Mims explained in the Wall Street Journal: