Amazon To Roll Out Tools To Monitor Factory Workers and Machines (arstechnica.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon is rolling out cheap new tools that will allow factories everywhere to monitor their workers and machines, as the tech giant looks to boost its presence in the industrial sector. Launched by Amazon's cloud arm AWS, the new machine-learning-based services include hardware to monitor the health of heavy machinery and computer vision capable of detecting whether workers are complying with social distancing. Amazon said it had created a two-inch, low-cost sensor -- Monitron -- that can be attached to equipment to monitor abnormal vibrations or temperatures and predict future faults. AWS Panorama, meanwhile, is a service that uses computer vision to analyze footage gathered by cameras within facilities, automatically detecting safety and compliance issues such as workers not wearing PPE or vehicles being driven in unauthorized areas. Amazon said it had installed 1,000 Monitron sensors at its fulfillment centers near the German city of Monchengladbach, where they are used to monitor conveyor belts handling packages.
If successful, said analyst Brent Thill from Jefferies, the move would help Amazon cement its position as the dominant player in cloud computing, in the face of growing competition from Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud as well as a prolonged run of slowed segment growth. "This idea of predictive analytics can go beyond a factory floor," Mr. Thill said. "It can go into a car, on to a bridge, or on to an oil rig. It can cross fertilize a lot of different industries." The new services, announced on Tuesday during the company's annual cloud computing conference, represent a step up in the tech giant's efforts to gather and crunch real-world data in areas it currently feels are underserved. "If you look at manufacturing and industrial generally, it's a space that has seen some innovations, but there's a lot of pieces that haven't been digitized and modernized," said Matt Garman, AWS's head of sales and marketing, speaking to the FT.
If successful, said analyst Brent Thill from Jefferies, the move would help Amazon cement its position as the dominant player in cloud computing, in the face of growing competition from Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud as well as a prolonged run of slowed segment growth. "This idea of predictive analytics can go beyond a factory floor," Mr. Thill said. "It can go into a car, on to a bridge, or on to an oil rig. It can cross fertilize a lot of different industries." The new services, announced on Tuesday during the company's annual cloud computing conference, represent a step up in the tech giant's efforts to gather and crunch real-world data in areas it currently feels are underserved. "If you look at manufacturing and industrial generally, it's a space that has seen some innovations, but there's a lot of pieces that haven't been digitized and modernized," said Matt Garman, AWS's head of sales and marketing, speaking to the FT.
Added value services (Score:5, Funny)
Ben Hur: (Score:2)
Battle speed, hortator.
Battle speed!
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Does it come with a whip attachment for galley slaves?
It's all big fun until our freedoms are undone.
Resist Big Tech fascism before it is too late.
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Priorities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
the new machine-learning-based services include hardware to monitor the health of heavy machinery and computer vision capable of detecting whether workers are complying with social distancing
Monitor health of machines, but only compliance of humans. Got it.
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A tool to monitor the actions of the worker to more effectively program their actions and to track any expressions of anti-corporate dissent (dirty looks at supervisors, failing to continuously focus on programmed task productivity losses). A robot AI programs the worker to be more productive more obedient as well as more respectful of any executives, any disrespect flagged for disciplinary action. All done by the AI their overseer.
Now add in work from home and that device in your home monitoring the corpor
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These priorities are not set by Amazon, but by the government. Privacy laws in the USA prevent the employer from collecting and using the health data of their employees. No law says you cannot monitor compliance with PPE safety rules or social distancing.
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Further, there are laws stating that you must monitor compliance with PPE safety rules, at least in some jobs and circumstances. Social distancing may be too new of a thing to have laws about company compliance.
Freedom (Score:2)
workers are complying? anti union issues (Score:4, Interesting)
workers are complying? This may look like they trying to stop / log workers doing union talks.
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Or perhaps they are just readying for unions? With unions, the key is to apply all rules uniformly. My father worked for a union shop for many years, told me once how they had one maintenance worker take 3 hour lunches, and after getting written up for that the union backed the worked by saying it was unfair and that the company singled that guy out because they didn't monitor everyone's lunches. So, the factory implemented time tracking for everyone to clock out for lunch, so the union got what it wanted.
Re:workers are complying? anti union issues (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is great. You've managed to turn a story about a non-union workplace engaged in dystopian hellhole worker surveillance into a lesson on why unions are bad. Look how badly Amazon is treating its workers! Imagine how much worse it would be if they belonged to an evil union!
Amazon has every right to monitor their workers to make sure they're complying with company PPE/safety policies and doing the work they're supposed to be doing. I can't count the number of places I've worked where some people do little to nothing and get away with it. It's pretty much stealing from the company if you don't do the job you signed on to do. Union place or not, the company has a right to know if its workers are actually working and following safety procedures.
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. I can't count the number of places I've worked where some people do little to nothing and get away with it. It's pretty much stealing from the company if you don't do the job you signed on to do.
Damned right ! You can usually spot them by the way they are on a salary rather than hourly pay. An expense account is also a good indicator.
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Sounds like you are definitely for the productivity monitoring - weed out all those who don't do much.
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Oh look how you managed to insert a false premise into your reply, specifically implying Amazon being a hellhole treating it's workers badly. This story is about Amazon developing and selling monitoring technology, which someone suggest might be an anti-union activity, to which I simply replied that it actually helps union goals of uniform application of rules. It's up to the union to negotiate the rules, so if they want no PPE, or purely voluntary PPE, let them negotiate that and if they agree, a company w
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But OSHA might give them troubles, not to mention the lawyers of people getting injured without PPE.
Also, I've been in a lot of construction sites, and union shops are probably more likely to require and enforce PPE than non-union, at least based on my anecdotal experience.
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workers are complying? This may look like they trying to stop / log workers doing union talks.
You left off the last part of that sentence -- "with social distancing". Of course taking the whole sentence into account eliminates your point though doesn't it? If workers aren't using PPE or distancing like they should then Amazon has every right to point that out and reprimand those employees.
I'm not anti-union but I am pro if you're on the clock do the job you agreed to and save the personal conversations for your own time. If you want to talk about and plan an union, don't do it while on the clock.
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What a pure cohencidence, that social distancing prevents any unrest from developing. Online contact is traced, monitored, logged and kept forever, dissent is easily dealt with by tracing the origin, deleting the post or banning the account. Offline contact is now traced, too, monitored, and logged forever, and everyone fired from any job if they don't comply.
This is totalitarianism. On crack.
So AWS is now becoming "The" (Score:3)
Dangerous (Score:1)
They say it is for checking safety and social-distancing, but we know what it will be really used for.
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and F* scifi channel for ending that early
Actually interesting topic, skip the trolling huh? (Score:2)
It isn't actually always about dystopia. This seems interesting.
Amazon Monitron
https://aws.amazon.com/monitro... [amazon.com]
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/a... [amazon.com]
Amazon Monitron is an end-to-end system that uses machine learning (ML) to detect abnormal behavior in industrial machinery, enabling you to implement predictive maintenance and reduce unplanned downtime.Installing sensors and the necessary infrastructure for data connectivity, storage, analytics, and alerting are foundational elements for enabling predictive maint
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Incorrect: I find this interesting, so it's not dystopian.
I can see it now (Score:2)
using their facial recoknition software, they will identify the workers and keep all the info collected about their job performance in a database that will be available for future employers.
You are the product, even if you're a company (Score:2)
"Amazon is rolling out cheap new tools that will allow AMAZON to monitor their factory workers and machines everywhere."
And once Amazon knows how your factory works, they can build a better one and put you out of business.
Amazon: MegaCorps #1.