Gary Mintchell

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. —Attributed to Yogi Berra

I recently wrote about a company that designed its own “stack” of its robot plus an autonomous mobile robot. Stack must be a new trend. I have written about Flexxbotics a few time over the past three years. The company features several several current and former executives from Aras plus other PLM suppliers as investors and/or board members. It features cutting edge software technology.

This news came to me touted as an industry first. Actually, I’ve already written about a similar application. That does not denigrate the accomplishment. It only speaks to marketing. AI has been a part of vision systems as long as I can remember. AI as an automation tool continues to become more powerful and useful. Just go past hype, as I’ve written before, and look at the usefulness (or hype).

Zebra Technologies winding down Fetch-based mobile robot group news from the Robot Report. Steve Crowe writes in the news item, “Zebra Technologies is winding down its autonomous mobile robot (AMR) division. The group was built around Zebra’s $290 million acquisition of AMR maker Fetch Robotics in 2021. The move marks a strategic retreat from the robotics push Zebra launched to expand its warehouse automation capabilities.”

Podcast released on my podcast site and on YouTube.

Upfront, I’ll admit that I hate how everything has moved to a subscription model. I use few Microsoft products (Word for reading press releases and my monthly column to Italy, Excel for occasional tracking, Powerpoint almost never), yet I must pay an annual subscription. I dropped Adobe everything except for reader. Just don’t use it enough.

The Case for Stakeholder Capitalism. I saw this on Keith Teare’s That Was The Week newsletter. I’m not particularly a fan of Andrew Keen. He’s a bit more cynical and conservative than I. But this image portrays a problem capitalism’s image in America (and more?) has. Too much greed. Emphasis only on shareholder wealth with a lack of values and consideration of the many other stakeholders in the enterprise.

I have shunned new year predictions for the entire time I’ve been writing about technology and manufacturing. As has been said (attributed to physicist Niels Bohr and philosopher Yogi Berra), predictions are hard, especially about the future.

I’m catching up on some pre-holiday news. Companies have been developing custom packages to (hopefully) make things easier for customers to know what to purchase and apply. This is a unique little package. Siemens is offering a starter pack for small and medium sized businesses in order to “enhance operational efficiency.”

I haven’t been to a general technology trade show for years. Going to the manufacturing mecca known as Hannover costs more than I wish to pay for the experience. My company exhibited at the old Comdex in Las Vegas and Chicago back in the late 80s-early 90s. That folded. Consumer Electronic Show (CES) replaced it as the huge tech show. I’ve never been. I’m not interested in TVs.