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Renting robots to help factories do the worst jobs
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An industrial palletiser from Formic picks up a box at MattPak in Franklin Park, Illinois, on Aug 20.
PHOTO: TAYLOR GLASCOCK/NYTIMES
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Farah Stockman
Employees at S&F Foods dreaded lifting heavy cardboard boxes from a conveyor belt and placing them onto pallets for shipment all day. So Mr Mike Calleja, the plant manager for the company, which makes frozen food for school cafeterias, hired a robot.
Buying a robot could cost as much as US$500,000 (S$641,000), and Mr Calleja wasn’t even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Illinois, firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about US$23 an hour, roughly the same as a human.
