The Robots are Here (and they are Clueless)
Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

The Robots are Here (and they are Clueless)

Last week, I read the amazing true story of what happened when Dave Meslin tried to order boxes from Amazon.

He ordered an item that said "25 shipping boxes". He received a box of granola. He indicated that he had gotten the wrong item, and was shipped more granola. He complained again and received a package of Harry Potter coasters. The system was clearly broken, but nobody could figure out how to fix it.

No alt text provided for this image

There are clear efficiency benefits in creating highly automated systems. However, if the regular people who support your operation don't understand how they work, your company is at the mercy of the automated monster you have created. The problem is that your employees don't know your system is malfunctioning, and your fancy executive dashboard is going to show everything operating fine. Only your customers, who are receiving the wrong items, know that your system has gone haywire.

In case you are wondering, the problem in this case was that the other items were shipped in the same boxes that Dave was trying to order. Amazons warehouse robot scanned the first barcode it could find and found the one from the box manufacturer before the one that actually represented the product in the box. That's why Amazon believes that a whole raft of different products are all instances of the object "25 shipping boxes".

Do you have a process in place that monitors what your operation looks like from the outside?


This post originally appeared in the Technology That Fits newsletter. Don't miss the next one, sign up.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Sten Vesterli的更多文章

  • Price Transparency

    Price Transparency

    An American friend of mine went to get tested for coronavirus together with his wife. He went to a hospital covered by…

    1 条评论
  • Blaming the Humans

    Blaming the Humans

    A Danish frigate accidentally launched a Harpoon missile back in the 1980s. It was an accident that couldn't happen.

  • Wasting Money

    Wasting Money

    This week's episode of my podcast Beneficial Intelligence is about wasting money. The business always complains that IT…

  • Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

    Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

    Newspapers are fending off a flurry of press releases from companies eager to reassure shareholders that they are not…

    2 条评论
  • Agile is not just for IT

    Agile is not just for IT

    IT professionals have struggled valiantly for many years to spread agile principles outside of IT, but with very…

  • IT is the Second Line of Defense

    IT is the Second Line of Defense

    In a health emergency, healthcare workers are the first line of defense. These people face a crushing workload…

    11 条评论
  • The Cost of Doing Nothing

    The Cost of Doing Nothing

    I went down to a local electronics shop to buy a specific device the other day. Their website listed three in stock…

    6 条评论
  • Amateurs and Professionals

    Amateurs and Professionals

    How hard can it be to gather 1777 data records? As events in Iowa show, surprisingly difficult. As an IT professional…

    1 条评论
  • Another Deadly?Boeing Design Error

    Another Deadly?Boeing Design Error

    It turns out that the defective thinking behind the two deadly 737 MAX 8 crashes started killing people more than a…

    8 条评论
  • Goodbye, Oracle

    Goodbye, Oracle

    In aviation, there is a type of accident known as Controlled Flight into Terrain. It means that a perfectly good…

    54 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了