Storms roaming around.

[yogi]

I'm pretty sure you can imagine how the UPS delivery system can damage any package it handles. Based on what I know about the time/motion studies the delivery truck people had to go through at one time, I'd speculate the UPS internal system is highly efficient and automated. Regardless, those automatons are not perfect and accidents do happen. When you have thousands of boxes flying along a conveyor at high speed and one of them suddenly doesn't obey the rules, you can bet your bottom dollar that dozens, if not hundreds, of boxes fall off that high speed conveyor. It would indeed be like throwing a "case down the driveway like a bowling ball." UPS knows this will happen and that is the reason why they have stupid rules for packaging. They would indeed go bankrupt if they had to pay out all the damaged goods insurance claims. All this highly efficient throughput would explain why WalMart can get away with "free" shipping. It's obviously not free to them, but the costs are super low per package.

My father-in-law once took me for a tour through the Chicago Sun Times newspaper plant. You know how big those rolls of newsprint are, I'm sure. Well the presses there would get the paper running through at something like 65 mph. I watched them changed rolls without stopping the presses and was thoroughly amazed. But then, the inevitable does happen. A paper jam in the middle of those high speed presses is a major catastrophe. Newsprint flies around like you never thought possible - no, I didn't get to see that, but was told about it. LOL So, that is what I figure goes on at UPS, FedEx and the likes. They have a high speed processing line that explodes like a volcano when things go wrong.

[Kellemora]

I've been in a couple of UPS hubs in the past, amazing how they work. The trucks unload onto carts that are pulled around by a chain up high to the sorting conveyors. Amazing to watch.

Yeppers, newspapers, when one roll gets to the end and those belts snap to pull the next roll onto the feed, it sounds like a shotgun was shot in the paper room.

McGraw/Hill had a book publishing plant in Des Peres for several years. Also an amazing place to visit. They mostly printed school books, but the operation was something else to see. Materials start off on the bottom floor, printing on the second floor, binding on the third floor, and up by the ceiling of the third floor is where the cases of books when out of a chute and down conveyors to the loading docks. Each of those conveyors could hold like a thousand cases of the same book waiting to go onto a delivery truck.
I just happen to be there when they were loading the plastic pallets with cases of books and running them on rails into a tractor trailer. Machines did 99% of the work! Books are heavy and a pallet load of books is super heavy, and being on plastic pallets, sometimes the pallet itself caves under. If it is from the front of the pallet, they just keep shoving it into the truck, hi hi.
But if it was a side that caved, then they had to grab another pallet and transfer all the cases onto the new pallet by hand sorta. They had vacuum hands they used for moving those cases around fast.

[yogi]

Automation, and robots of sorts, have been around for a long time. What's different about today's world is that those machines are getting some intelligence. In my line of work I got to see and work with machines that built circuit boards and loaded them with the tiniest parts you could imagine. It took quite a bit to set one up for a new board, but after that the arms of the machine just flew like a hummingbird. It was all very impressive at the time and I often wonder what they are doing now and days to build cell phones.

I'm not sure if I told you this story or not, but a lot of our phone manufacturing was sent out to be done in China. The factories there did not want our automation or our robots, and they claimed they can achieve the same throughput and quality as the machines with just people. They had LOTS of people who were apparently costing them less money than a component placement machine. As it turned out they did in fact not disappoint. They were able to keep up the quality and meet the schedules. Instead of a machine they had a few hundred people with tweezers. They were all very grateful and conscientious. Eventually we sold that part of the company to them.

[ocelotl]

Automation, and robots of sorts, have been around for a long time. What's different about today's world is that those machines are getting some intelligence. In my line of work I got to see and work with machines that built circuit boards and loaded them with the tiniest parts you could imagine. It took quite a bit to set one up for a new board, but after that the arms of the machine just flew like a hummingbird. It was all very impressive at the time and I often wonder what they are doing now and days to build cell phones.

I'm not sure if I told you this story or not, but a lot of our phone manufacturing was sent out to be done in China. The factories there did not want our automation or our robots, and they claimed they can achieve the same throughput and quality as the machines with just people. They had LOTS of people who were apparently costing them less money than a component placement machine. As it turned out they did in fact not disappoint. They were able to keep up the quality and meet the schedules. Instead of a machine they had a few hundred people with tweezers. They were all very grateful and conscientious. Eventually we sold that part of the company to them.

I think I can imagine... That was the last job I've done, setting up an automated assembly and test line and operate it from schematics... Proof is right on You Tube... Haven't done mounting on Imperial 01005 but did it on 0201 and 0402... replacing defective components without a good pulse and a good loupe is quite difficult. It was quite entertaining. I'm explaining the procedure in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pVZS1dOJk

[yogi]

That YouTube explanation was in a language I did not understand, but I did recognize the machinery. LOL The idea behind using machines had a lot to do with maintaining a certain level of quality. The assumption was that if circuit boards can be built perfectly (defects < 3 ppm) there would be no need for testing, analyzing, and repair. Fully assembled phones that did not work were to be scrapped and not fixed. The machine also eliminates production line workers, which probably was the most compelling reason to go with automation. The Chinese were able to use people instead of machines because their workers didn't enjoy the high wages and fringe benefits that American workers do. All that is changing now, but it was a different story 25 years ago.

[Kellemora]

Interesting Video!
There was a company in the Ballwin area named Pacco. They packaged smaller automotive repair parts, both for retail consumers as well as for parts houses and the like. When my first wife's mother worked their, everything was done by hand, the parts added to the packaging cells as the conveyor brought them down the line. Her job was not filling the cells, but keeping the boxes of items by each line worker to pick parts from to fill those boxes.
A few years later they were bought out by Warner Motive, and pre-computer mechanical arms did almost all the packaging. Each arm was controlled by a multi-lobed camshaft that controlled its motions and other parts of its operation. But unlike a human who could pull a part from a box on each side of them, turn them the right way and place them in the cells of the package. Each machine could only do one part, and that part had to be fed to the machines in the proper direction and with the right side facing up, which still took people power, just not as many workers, since many of the parts now came in flat packed instead of bulk boxes full.
Little by little they replaced the mechanical machines with those that were early computer powered, which did away with having those expensive cams made, because solenoid drivers now did all controlled movements, and much faster. And right before my first wife's mom retired, they installed machines to sort the parts and turn them in the right direction for the flat pack feeding system already in place. So, little by little, as older workers retired, they did not need to be replaced with humanoids.

[yogi]

A couple interesting things are happening which did not exist 25 years ago. Today it might not be necessary for an American company to outsource the labor to developing countries. Those countries are becoming scarce because the economy there has increased as a result of our outsourcing. When that happens the standard of living and quality of life improves. At some point those developing countries reach parity and the cost advantage to us disappears. The other trend of significance is indeed in robotics. We have some of the most sophisticated robotics in existence and a lot of it is reducing the costs for manufacturing inside our own country. A few foreign automobile manufacturers, for example, have outsourced their production here because of the cost advantage related to automation. It's all very ironic.

[ocelotl]

That job was in a start up that had two lines of business, one was for electric bicycles. The hardware and firmware of the electronics was designed in house. In that video I'm showing in a gross manner the assembly steps for a battery management system card, that was used for the bicycle batteries. The other business line was doing the engineering and manufacturing for circuitry for different projects. Our point was in the costs and the accumulated experience of the teamwork.

More or less, the explaining was that for a test assembly we had to check all the steps to make it reliable. First a lead free solder paste is placed over the PCB in the way serigraphy prints are made, but with a stainless steel stencil plate. After that the automated mounting of the parts. If there's a part that can´t be taken by the pick and place machine, either because of its shape or because we didn't have a feeder to mount it, we placed it by hand. At all times, my intention was to automate everything, so, in many times I used an acrylic plate to place the parts as if they were provided in a tray, taking advantage of the strips they were sold in. Then we had a soldering oven, where we heat the raw assembled cards in order to melt the tin solder so that all the parts are soldered to the PCB, taking care that the cards and parts are not overcooked in order not to damage them. At last, there was an automated visual testing machine, where we could check placement, orientation, visual quality of the solder and detect if there was any mistake from assembly. The bulk of the work was for setting all the parameters to make the assembly as fast, perfect and reliable as possible, so the assembly could proceed taking advantage of the speed of all that machinery. The example in the video was done at 30% of full speed, at 80-90% of full speed, and using multiple feeders for the most used components on each design, could result in assembling and testing 40 to 60 of those cards per hour.

This company had to move at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and I couldn't follow them, yet I liked to be helpful and enjoyed the challenge of improving the yield and quality of the work there.

Most manufacturers take advantage of the proximity to customers to place their manufacturing plants in today's world, so, the cost advantage that used to be in China disappears when the import taxes and the labor and shipping costs raise. So, many US, European, Japanese and South Korean companies install facilities throughout North America to benefit from the NAFTA and USMCA treaties...

[yogi]

I spent at least half of my 36 years with Motorola working with those machines you describe and which are highlighted in the video. What I saw in the video was about the level at which production was when I left Motorola, but I also worked for them when radio boards where hand soldered, through the wave solder period, and then the automatic placement machines. Some of the factories I worked in had a dozen or more highly automated production lines that created pc boards for cellular phones. As you know there was a time when production could not meet demand so that things developed and moved rather quickly through our factories. My interaction with those pc boards was to verify the quality of the build. We looked at all the traces and all the electronic components using equipment that could verify their value and their functionality to a limited degree. The ultimate goal was to fine tune the production line so that what I was doing would be unnecessary. We got to be very close to six sigma quality but they never eliminated testing altogether. We heard rumors where some factories in Japan were able to build and ship without testing, but it never truly happened where I worked.

I don't think a reasonable person can deny that we live in a global economy. There are many reasons why that must be, both economically and politically. Few countries on earth enjoy the standard of living we have here in America, and as I pointed out there is a mutual benefit in outsourcing work. Every country of the world is a sovereign entity with a heritage they can be proud of, but sometimes that self-esteem gets carried away. Thus things like import duties are imposed as a means of control (or punishment in some cases). It's unfortunate when that happens because the consumer, people like you and me, are the ones who pay for all that political bickering.

[Kellemora]

I've seen both sides of the story regarding overseas labor.
We often forget our ancestors worked for 15 cents per day, and it slowly moved up to a dollar a day, before inflation started running rampant.
For many countries, it was a blessing to have a U.S. company decide to outsource to them.
People who normally only earned 50 cents a day, were earning a dollar a day or more.
And many who were unemployed found jobs in the factories.
This elevated their lifestyles considerably over the norm for the country.
Having all these job coming in for the cheap labor, but much higher labor than what they were used to, was helping their economies to grow. And along with it, so did their salaries go up, and pretty soon inflation became the norm for once fairly stable countries.

I served two extended mission trips to east central Africa. We helped get 24 independent farms started.
In retrospect, looking back on that experience. I can't say our getting involved with their cultures was a good thing.
Way too many liked the western way of doing things, and all the things we had to help us do the work.
Even though we left all of the tools we brought with us there for them to use. It may have harmed their way of life just meeting us.

[yogi]

About the only certainty in life is change, which of course results in death of the old and established status. Another certainty of existence is the interaction between its elements. The interactions affect all the elements involved. We as humans place a value on those effects by thinking they are either good or bad, progressive or regressive. The certainty is that the interacting elements do not remain unchanged. When this line of thought is applied to a global population of people it should come as no surprise that individuals, cultures, and entire societies are constantly evolving into something else simply because they interact with their environment. From a metaphysical point of view all this action and interaction may be deemed to have some value. Objectively speaking it's all value neutral. There is no good or bad in physics. It simply happens.

My line of thought leads to some mind boggling conclusions that I'm certain you already are aware of. The interactions to which I refer above create new circumstances composed of a finite number of possibilities. Thus your observation about your missionary work is absolutely correct. Your presence among those natives changed their circumstances, and thus new possibilities evolved out of your presence and interactions. As this progression of changes in possibilities grows, the resultant potential outcomes increase exponentially. The old saw is that a single grain of sand being in some other place that what it was could have changed the outcome of the universe as we know it.

[ocelotl]

I spent at least half of my 36 years with Motorola working with those machines you describe and which are highlighted in the video. What I saw in the video was about the level at which production was when I left Motorola, but I also worked for them when radio boards where hand soldered, through the wave solder period, and then the automatic placement machines. Some of the factories I worked in had a dozen or more highly automated production lines that created pc boards for cellular phones. As you know there was a time when production could not meet demand so that things developed and moved rather quickly through our factories. My interaction with those pc boards was to verify the quality of the build. We looked at all the traces and all the electronic components using equipment that could verify their value and their functionality to a limited degree. The ultimate goal was to fine tune the production line so that what I was doing would be unnecessary. We got to be very close to six sigma quality but they never eliminated testing altogether. We heard rumors where some factories in Japan were able to build and ship without testing, but it never truly happened where I worked.

I don't think a reasonable person can deny that we live in a global economy. There are many reasons why that must be, both economically and politically. Few countries on earth enjoy the standard of living we have here in America, and as I pointed out there is a mutual benefit in outsourcing work. Every country of the world is a sovereign entity with a heritage they can be proud of, but sometimes that self-esteem gets carried away. Thus things like import duties are imposed as a means of control (or punishment in some cases). It's unfortunate when that happens because the consumer, people like you and me, are the ones who pay for all that political bickering.

Around 20 years ago, I was also working in a trough hole assembly manufacturing plant. The placement of the parts was already partly automated, since setting the axial part strips for the placement machine was done manually and the DIP semiconductors where fed from transport tubes, and there were at least three wave soldering machines I remember. I remember that in the area I was working there was a Fairchild Fault Finder machine, probably made in the 1970's but refurbished in the 1990's. The most common mistake was misplaced Tantalum capacitors... Retouching and cleaning of the PCB's, along with final testing was the main activity there. As I remember, my first encounter with six sigma protocols was through the Motorola manuals. In the back of all them there was a section devoted to the six sigma program and the way it could be implemented. The era of the big three American Semiconductors companies had its charm while it lasted.

Power and money greed move the corrupt people in politics. The desire to control the life of the rest of the people damage severely the development of new ideas, relationships and improvals to the way of life. Yet the closedness of mind of some individuals doesn't let them grasp that instead of helping they are damaging their communities. Too bad that the abuse on the freedom of some individuals is the reasoning behind the freedom limitations we have seen during our lifes, specially in the last 20 years.

[yogi]

The first generation Fault Finder machine is the one I worked with. We had the original ones and not the refurbished variety. Eventually Hewlett Packard made it's own version of a Fault Finder and we upgraded to that (HP3065 or something like that). Not all the design engineers thought we were doing a valid test so that the scope of products I saw was somewhat limited.

Motorola was big on Six Sigma but they did not invent the concept. I think they learned a lot from the Japanese factories. We might have been the first company in this country to implement those techniques, which is probably why we wrote the book, so to speak. I learned a lot about statistics during that period, and the famous quote from Mark Twain became glaringly real to me: there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" LOL

Here in America the political system has changed over the last twenty years. There was a time when members of congress were there to truly serve the best interests of the people. That was the foundation of democracy, but it depended a lot on the honor system. Sadly that value once place on being honorable has vanished. Now the powers that be are there to serve their own self-interests under the pretense that we elected them to do so. That seems to be part of human nature, but it also seems to be the end of democracy. There is enough of the old school still alive and well, but at the moment the balance is very shaky. I don't know which way the scales will tilt.

[Kellemora]

So true Yogi! I read everything, but have to run, the frau called me from work, her car starts, then dies right away.
It has new fuel filters, so I know it is not that. But since she did get an oil change yesterday, I have a hunch they pulled a hose loose when they opened the hood and only pushed it back on when it needs glued or clamped. At least that is what I hope it is.

[yogi]

If there is anything worse than the car breaking down at some remote location, it is your frau's car breaking down at a remote location. My hopes are there with you in that it is something simple and easy to mend. The parking lot at work is not the best place to mend any car, but obviously you have cell phones which can be used to call for a tow should you need it.

All I can add to my above comments is that I think the realization of from whence those changes in the political atmosphere are coming is at hand. I don't know if the system can be fixed before it collapses entirely, but I'm hoping. Maybe there is a towing service that can be called to bring our governance back to home port.

[Kellemora]

The fact she drove home after the oil change, and to work the next day did have me puzzled, at least until I got there and popped the hood open. They replaced the air filter and didn't close the box properly, so the air-flow sensor was pitching an error and shutting the engine down. I took the cover off and reseated the gasket the way it belongs. I drove her car home and she followed me in my car. I didn't have a single problem with it, and today we were out to go vote and it ran like a top.
There is a little channel in the cover over the air filter box that holds a round tubular gasket. If you are not careful, the gasket pops out of the groove when you try seating it over the bare edged body of the filter box. And once it starts coming off, you end up with a good portion of it inside the filter box.
It appears that is all it was that caused her engine to die. And has run fine since.
Glad it didn't cause any problems when we were both out and about today.

[yogi]

I didn't realize there were air flow sensors in any engine. LOL The gods know that my Saturn has more sensors than it has nuts and bolts - kind of makes sense since I don't think they use nuts and bolts any more. All those sensors are connected to the car's computer, of course. Thus if any one of them reports an error the computer isn't smart enough to compensate or just give a warning. All it knows is to shut down. Glad you didn't have problems today, but isn't this an odd time of the year to be out voting? What are y'all voting for anyway?

[Kellemora]

I didn't know her car had that kind of sensor in it either. I thought only fuel injected cars had those.
Hmm, maybe her car is fuel injected, although it has the same engine as mine, hmm, maybe mine is too.
I honestly don't remember anymore. Bad sign of old age, hi hi.
In any case, there is this little cylinder with a butterfly valve inside of it. It is connected after the air filter at the other end of the box from the intake scoop end. I guess the filter restricts the proper amount of air, and if you remove the air filter it won't let the car run, and warns you when the air filter is too dirty.
I know today's cars are more complicated that NORAD, hi hi.
But I think all that junk they add to the cars is to help build up repair revenues for the dealers who service them, hi hi.

Early Voting for our City Council members. We have 6 Districts and everyone can vote for the council member in all districts, which is actually a good thing. Hopefully we are voting out most of the incumbents this go around, after some of the stunts they pulled over the last few years. The guy in our district wanted to make Knoxville a Sanctuary City for illegal aliens. But fortunately all the other districts said NO so he didn't get to pull of that stunt.

[yogi]

My old brain isn't a lot better than yours. I only have a vague ghost of memory about most, if not all, automobile engines changing over to fuel injection. It was a big deal when it happened, but that's about all I recall. My wife now owns a 2017 Toyota Corolla. Talking about upgrades, that car has everything imaginable and then some. There is a system that detects if you are moving out of the lane you're in. I guess that's intended to wake you up on long trips if you get groggy. Then there is the system that detects if you are about to crash into somebody. That one has sensitivity calibration that the driver is supposed to set up. The settings determine how hard the brakes engage when danger arises, and the distance from that crash point can also be changed. There is a whole chapter in the owners' manual describing how to do it. And, what car would be worth it's salt if it didn't have a navigation system that can be tethered by Bluetooth to your smartphone? That system has a manual of it's own explaining how to set things up. I could not believe all the extras that are part of the dashboard. It would take me a year or two to figure it all out. And I don't even want to think what it would cost to repair any of those things.

OK on the City Council elections. It seems odd that you can vote for members in some other district, but then those folks can return the favor by voting for your district members. I guess it all works out. And you are right about the political scene becoming unreal.

[Kellemora]

I worry about these new cars and the folks who drive are already overly lazy. I think they will only get lazier!

I think the reason we can vote for each district is because they are all part of the whole, and get their funding from the same treasury. Even so, there are a lot of things only people vote for in their own district.
Actually, St. Louis is like that too, there are certain offices where a Resident of the City can vote for the folks in those departments throughout the city. But I forget all the fancy names of the departments and which ones where everyone votes and which ones were only those in that district vote.
But living out in the County, we didn't vote on anything that had to do with the City which is a separate entity.