Interesting article on applied systems analysis. Could a city's bus system have vending machines with varying contents depending on the route?
=================================== Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM [email protected] 505-473-9646 =================================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Blogtrottr" <[email protected]> Date: Jul 22, 2017 4:08 AM Subject: Your Daily digest for David Pogue To: <[email protected]> Cc: David Pogue > > The pizza-making robots that want to change the world > <http://pogueman.tumblr.com/post/163258166282> > Jul 21st 2017, 17:57 > > HBO’s comedy “Silicon Valley > <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hbo-silicon-valley-season-4-cast-interviews-153502725.html>” > makes fun of the way even boring startup tech companies adopt the same > mission statement: “To make the world a better place.” > > But serial entrepreneur and former Microsoft executive Alex Garden > <http://www.pwc.com/us/en/pwc-exchange/spring-event/alex-garden.html> > isn’t shy about stating his new company’s path to making the world a better > place—through *pizza*. It’s not just any pizza, though. Zume pizzas are > made by robots, and they’re cooked in pizza ovens *inside* delivery > trucks. > [image: image]Alex Garden (right) treats me to the finished product. > > “One of the founding principles of this company is that every American has > a right to a healthy meal they can afford,” he told me. “If you look at > pizza, what is it? It’s high-quality bread, and high-quality organic > vegetables, and meats and cheeses. All of these things are things that are > good for you in moderation. And the number of calories really is a function > of how much sugar is in the food. Zume Pizza is half the calories per > slice, roughly half the cholesterol and half the fat, of any of the > national leading chains.” > > How? “The main reason is sugar,” says Garden, whose pizzas range in price > from $10 for a cheese to $20 for a pineapple express > <https://zumepizza.com/#/>. > > “We don’t put any extra sugar in the sauce. We don’t put any extra sugar > in the dough. And we let our dough age for 24 hours; during that process, > the fermentation of the dough further reduces the sugar in it.” > > He also has much to say about where he gets his ingredients—directly from > the providers, without the warehouses and distribution channels that, say, > Pizza Hut (YUM <https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/YUM/>) or Domino’s (DPZ > <https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DPZ?p=DPZ>) employ. He uses > software—predictive algorithms—to know what he’ll need when. He makes his > sausage and tomato sauce in-house. > > But that’s not the most headline-grabbing feature of Zume pizza, which > was founded in 2015 and currently delivers in Mountain View, California > <https://zumepizza.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/218747627-When-are-you-coming-to-my-area->, > and surrounding areas. The biggest feature is the robots. > The robots > > Inside the Zume kitchen, robots are displacing more human workers every > passing month. These days, one robot presses out the dough into the > familiar flattened circle; a second and third (Pepe and Giorgio) squirt > tomato sauce or white sauce onto each pie; a fourth (Marta) spreads the > sauce around (“perfectly, but not too perfectly,” Garden says). Humans > apply the toppings, but then a fourth machine (Bruno) scoops up the pizza > from the conveyor belt and delicately lays it into the baking oven; a fifth > (Leonardo) chops it neatly into eight slices with a single, > 200-pounds-of-force stroke. > [image: image]Pepe squirts tomato sauce all day long. > > Eventually, Garden and his cofounder Julia Collins intend to replace all > of the humans in their pizza shop. > > The robots are fun to watch—as long as you can avoid thinking, “This is > what the end of human employment looks like.” > > But Garden insists that replacing the people is also part of making the > world a better place. > > “The automation exists so that we can eliminate boring, repetitive jobs, > and provide a more rewarding work environment for our employees,” he says. > “And it exists so that we can buy higher quality ingredients. That’s the > reason why we use it.” > > For example, he says, “taking a pizza off of a production line and putting > it into an 800-degree oven is actually not particularly rewarding, and it’s > also quite dangerous. So we found a way to automate that work now that was > previously done by a person. > > “So what happens to the person? Well, good news. We’re a high-growth > company. We have people who’ve moved from a role in the kitchen to other > roles—to customer support or to finance. You come in and prove that you can > work the Zume way, and we make a lifetime commitment to you in return.” > > The math still didn’t work for me. “But today, 100 people work here,” I > said. “If you didn’t have the robots, it would be 115.” > > “That is true,” he replied, “but here’s the point you have to consider. If > you took a national competitor that we compete against, what percentage of > their workforce are making the absolute rock-bottom minimum wage for the > place they work? $7 an hour, $7.50 an hour? Do they have benefits? Is it a > safe job? What hours are they working? > > “Every employee in this company makes a minimum of $15 an hour. Everyone > gets full medical, dental, vision [insurance] for them and for their > families. And everyone, when they hit their six-month mark, becomes a > shareholder. So you can make an argument that the absolute number of > employed people is the way to go; we don’t believe that.” > [image: image]In half a second, this machine cuts the 14-inch pizza into > 8 slices.Inside the box > > Garden and his team have obsessed over every aspect of the American > pizza-delivery system—including the box. Zume’s pizza is excellent, but the > box is a masterpiece. (“So you redesigned the box?” I asked him. His reply: > “We didn’t redesign the box. We designed the box.”) > > It’s made of compressed sugar cane (!), so it’s compostable, > biodegradable, and collapsible—you can fold it up to fit your compost or > trash can. Garden says that it also keeps the pizza warmer, keeps it dry, > and prevents it from getting soggy, thanks to eight narrow channels below > the pizza, like spokes. They conduct moisture down and away from the crust, > pooling in a shallow well under the middle. “Your hands will be completely > clean after you eat a Zume pizza, because there’s no grease or sogginess > anywhere.” > > (This I found hard to believe. But as my family discovered when we ate > Zume pizza that night, it’s absolutely true: Our fingers were not greasy.) > [image: image]The most thought-through pizza box in America. > > The box’s lid slips under the lower box, which (a) creates a nice little > stand and (b) doesn’t occupy your entire table with the ugly, greasy open > lid, as a regular box does. > > It even has shallow round depressions that match depressions in the top of > the lid, so that stacked boxes sort of interlock. “With one hand, you can > carry five pizzas and walk around, and there’s no hope of them falling > over,” Garden points out. > The truck concept > > But Alex Garden isn’t finished yet. He’s also reinvented the delivery > truck. > > Each one contains 28 or 56 individual pizza ovens. By consulting GPS, the > truck fires up the oven when it’s four minutes away from your house, so > that the pizza is coming out of the oven as the truck arrives. > [image: image]The pizzas cook in their own little ovens–in the truck. > > That cook-en-route system might sound like it was designed to give you > freshly baked pizza, but it was actually Garden’s solution to a knotty > governmental problem: It’s against the law for workers to cook food in a > truck while it’s moving. > > The solution, of course, was to automate the cooking while in motion. No > person is involved, and so no laws are broken. > > Laws also dictate, by the way, that a food truck must contain a > three-compartment sink—for washing utensils, spatulas, and so on. Garden > didn’t want to devote precious oven space to some sink apparatus. So he > came up with a utensil-free truck. As the pizza finishes cooking, it ejects > from its oven like a CD from its player, and goes directly into the Zume > pizza box. “No one ever touches the food,” he says, and so there’s no need > for a sink in the truck. > Predictive pizza > > The part of Zume’s master plan that I found hardest to believe was that > often, your pizza is on its truck before you even order it. Garden says > that Zume’s AI software predicts what pizzas its customers will order, > when, and pre-loads them onto the truck. How could he possibly know what > his customers will order? > > “Do you order pizza?” he asked me. > > Yes, I told him. > > “And how often would you say when you order pizza, you get the same thing > you got last time?” > > “Probably 95 percent of the time,” I admitted. > > “Usually on the same day that week? Yeah. That makes you like most of the > other people in the country. So if you think about that…Plus things like, > when there’s a game you get more orders; when it’s hot out, you get fewer > orders; you sell a lot more cheese pizza around 6:00 p.m. than you do at > 9:00 p.m.; [you get spikes during] political debates; and another three or > four dozen factors that we take into consideration when we’re predicting > volume. > > “Then we look at it neighborhood by neighborhood. Perhaps there’s a > neighborhood that really likes Hawaiian pizza, there’s another neighborhood > who really likes pepperoni pizza. So we have all of these signals and they > give us the ability to predict about 95% of the time what people are going > to order, before they do.” > > And what if there’s a run on pineapple pizza on a weird day? > > “We have what we called field reloading, which is giving the trucks more > inventory in flight. It’s almost like air-to-air refueling in the Air > Force.” > Zume vs the World > > Zume just expanded from one location to two. Next year, all of California; > then to the whole country; then the world. > > That’s the plan, anyway. > > Will Zume’s robots and lofty goals really make the world a better place? > > Well, already they’re making the world a better pizza—and that’s a good > start. > > *More from David Pogue:* > > Is through-the-air charging a hoax? > <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/investigation-air-charging-hoax-174529738.html> > > Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels > <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/electrify-existing-bike-2-minutes-ingenious-wheels-162540379.html> > > Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables > <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marty-cooper-inventor-cellphone-next-step-implantables-183609452.html> > > The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update > <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-review-windows-10-creators-update-154611419.html> > > Now I get it: Bitcoin > <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/now-i-get-it-bitcoin-155147167.html> > > David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app > <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogues-search-for-the-worlds-best-air-travel-app-145902717.html> > > The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their > fingers > <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html> > > *David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments > in the comments section below. On the web, he’s **davidpogue.com* > <http://davidpogue.com/>*. On Twitter, he’s **@pogue* > <https://twitter.com/Pogue?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor>*. > On email, he’s [email protected] <[email protected]>. You can **read > all his articles here* <https://www.yahoo.com/author/david-pogue>*, or > you can sign up to **get his columns by email* > <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-to-find-david-pogues-stuff-on-yahoo-finance-110615434.html> > *. * > You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at > blogtrottr.com. > > If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from > this feed <https://blogtrottr.com/unsubscribe/7pG/BpHnPQ>, or manage all > your subscriptions <https://blogtrottr.com/subscriptions/>. >
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