OT- suppliers of automation for fast food (ie McDonalds etc)

I’m just pondering on a Friday night .. that’s what us old folks do
So at $15 minimum wage, I’m certain fast food will automate even more.
I wonder about investments in these companies? Whoever they are.

A couple more years , you won’t see a person at a drive thru

I would tweak the max/min ratio of fries taken out of the bag on the way home. From there, the best profits could be determined.

Been an automation engineer for nearly 40 years & embrace it, but.....
Think about the automation of customers service.
Yesterday, I had to call my bank regarding a small problem, the first stage was to give me a list of options for the type of service I required, no problem, then put me through to an automated dunce, "In your own words, tell me what the call is about", my reply was simple (not going to divulge it obviously) but I needed to speak to an advisor, I it replied "recent transactions" and then gave me a list of recent transactions, not what I wanted, after repeated tries on a number different possible avenues, I just stopped answering, eventually the message was "please wait I will put you through to an advisor", Then comes the queue, yes you guessed it, 25 minutes later I was number 1 in the queue, after being number 1 for about 12 minutes (yes I was timing it) I got the "message sorry cannot take your call please try again later".
Let automation do the things that are repetitive, but we all need that human interaction, and people need jobs.

I say soon there will only be one or two people working there anyway

https://hackaday.com/2020/08/12/the-ever-accelerating-automation-of-fast-food/

The first one to go is the person taking the orders, everything will be on a phone as an app, they have robots making fries

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/05/16/automation-accelerates-in-the-fast-food-industry/

Its not like the humans make the food taste any better, 5 guys is soo much better

bulletin blues said:

I would tweak the max/min ratio of fries taken out of the bag on the way home. From there, the best profits could be determined.

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Minn = 98.5%

Max = 102% (there's always a couple loose that fell out of the container(s))

Actually McDonalds tried to automate the fries years back but figured out it took a human to apply the correct amount of salt on them so they dropped it.

There won't be too many people asking "do you want fries with that?" but it may be a recording.

Actually McDonald's tried to automate the fries years back but figured out it took a human to apply the correct amount of salt on them so they dropped it.

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They didn't try hard enough. It can be done.
The potato plants are highly automated and very sophisticated.

https://deltamotion.com/peter/Videos/Delta%20Fry%20Cutting%20Machine%20Demo.mp4
The knives move so fast you can't see them move. They will go down in up in about 16 ms. The motion profile must be precise so that the raw potato strips are not be moved when it is cut. If the strip moves the next cuts will not be in the right place. The high speed video is recorded at 2000 FPS. The motors are specially made and Delta makes the drives for these. The knives will cut to the bone but they will not cut the finger off.

These machines replace 8 to 20 people that use to look at the whole potatoes going by and look for defects and cut them out with paring knives. There are other scanning machines upstream that try to sort out good fries ( strips ) from the bad ones. The bad ones go to the defect removal machine which is what you see here. The defect removal machine records the length of the potato strips going in and out. The histograms allow the plants to allocate long and short potatoes optimally so a plant doesn't make the average potato strips that are too short. Long strips are cut in two so they will fit in those red McDonald's fry holders.

Potatoes are shot through a grid of blades by a water cannon where they come out as raw strips. We monitor the sound of the potatoes hitting the blades. We can tell if they are broken or loose.

The whole process is automated.

Automation is good because it is more productive but what do you do with the people that are replaced? Few can "learn to code" or get "green" jobs.

Tell your kids to take STEM classes.

In the '70's, we revolutionized the fry timers for Burger Chef. Burger Chef was a regional chain which was bought by Hardees in the '80s.

It was called the 'Tater Computator', and integrated the temperature with the time to more accurately determine when they were done. Revolutionary at the time.... (simple and basic now, but remember that we didn't use micro's back then).

In the early '90's, we worked on the french fry extruder, which used freeze dried potato flakes to make 'perfect' frys. The hardest part was making them look real by having random lengths!

Same with the conveyorized pizza ovens, and several other automation devices for fast food.

Heck, in the early '70s, we did alcohol dispensing for automating drinks in bars. Give me a 555 and a couple 358's, and I can control the world!

I'm having a hard time taking the OP seriously, but I have, at times, felt a pang of guilt about all of the jobs that I have eliminated over the years.

I remember the last project that I worked on in a local paper mill. They had 4 paper machines that had originally required a 16 man crew per machine to operate. When we finished that last project, 4 men operated all 4 machines.

It was only a few years later that those 4 machines were shut down altogether and shipped to China. That paper mill had employed 2500 people in it's heyday, but now, they only produce kraft pulp from a mixture of pine chips and recycled paper and they employ less than 200 people. These had been high paying union jobs with premium benefits.

Of course, had I not done the automation work that I have during my career, someone else would have done it. We can't live in the past.

I order a burger , fries and coke
And drive down the road and discover a
chicken sandwich, onion rings and a sprite ...
If your 555 timer could have fixed that , you’d be a billionaire

Bit bucket-
Felt guilty as you cashed your paycheck?

JRW said:

I order a burger , fries and coke
And drive down the road and discover a
chicken sandwich, onion rings and a sprite ...

Click to expand...

Leo Getz said it best in Lethal Weapon... 'They will .... you in the Drive Through' (It's on YouTube, but due to the language I'm not posting the link)

Best thing ever happen to me was when I lost my job(s) you get in a rut and dont even know it but when you look back you wish you would of lost/left sooner, dont get me wrong I about **** every time it happened.

I am still waiting for my all in one gum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yqw_f26SvM

JRW said:

I’m just pondering on a Friday night .. that’s what us old folks do
So at $15 minimum wage, I’m certain fast food will automate even more.
I wonder about investments in these companies? Whoever they are.

A couple more years , you won’t see a person at a drive thru

Click to expand...

I want automated fast food.

I think wages should match productivity, I don't get the idea of having people work for non-living wages.

Peter Nachtwey said:

Tell your kids to take STEM classes.

Click to expand...

Why? Engineers get told what to do buy people that aren't STEM.

Funny how investing in companies that automate fast food turn into this...
Now I know why I don't do Facebook etc
jeez..
I should know better.

Post 4 was good- Thanks Mark

NZ has a minimum wage of around 13.5 USD. We actually score better on the big mac index.



Anecdotally speaking they seem to still employ 5-6 people and more when they busy.



I do agree this number will decrease but its not going to happen over night.



Increasing the minimum wage which happens pretty regularly here is not the end of the world like they make it seem in the US.


https://www.globalprice.info/en/?p=statistics/bigmac