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Levi Strauss Replaces Human Sanding With Automated Lasers (bloomberg.com)
_Sharp'r_ writes: Stressing jeans used to require 300 to 400 workers with sandpaper all day. Now Levi Strauss does a better job by shooting their new jeans with computer-guided lasers in intricate patterns generated in CAD systems. Along the way, they save water and "will cut the number of chemicals it uses to produce jeans from 1,000 to a few dozen," reports Bloomberg.
Buy clothing that is not pre-worn aka deliberately damaged before sale. It will last longer that way.
LASERS!
If you truly want to save the Earth, please stop buying stuffs that are not good for planet Earth
If you want to see the process on video.
One of the cooler parts is that using software, they can now make reproducible artistic designs, designs to emphasize different body parts, text/image messages, whatever someone can dream up.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Imagine managing 300 to 400 people who do nothing for eight to 10 hours but to load a mannequin and then with sandpaper on their hands to begin the destruction process to remove the indigo.
Do the lasers still damage the fibres or do they just remove the indigo or even just its colour?
Indigo is a plant chemical that takes a specific chemical reaction to form, and needs special treatment to adhere it to the fibres. The fact that it does not adhere perfectly is what causes the specific worn look on jeans. If the fibres can be kept intact but the indigo selectively removed, you could have a pair of jeans that looks used but also can still be used for a long time.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Helps them survive the trade war.
Not that I am complaining. This process is better for (almost) everybody. But it shows how it goes with automation: A few hundred jobs lost, a few highly qualified gained. That is basically how this will work in most places. And the jobs are gone and are not coming back in some other form.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
For my life, i can't understand why people are willing to pay a premium for pre-worn out clothing.
I thought they hired poor people to wear the jeans for six months kneeling and stuff.
Fraud!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Endemic in the idiot class who desperately need to believe themselves to be worthwhile. By contrast us geeks KNOW we are worthwhile, don't bother to indulge in fashion - and don't get any girl friends... So in Darwinian terms, slavery to fashion is probably a good strategy.
I understand its fashion but deliberately weakening clothes is just STUPID!
Sanding down humans is SO 20th century. Now they can be ablated with lasers!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Last week I was looking at jeans in a store. It seems that this pre-worn stuff is all that's offered now anymore. Does anyone know if/where one can get actual new and un-wrecked jeans?
Could not imagine they produce this faded patterns like that in 2017. Sad.
Now that these expensive 300-400 workers have been removed from the total cost of producing said jeans, the consumer price will surely drop.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Its built entirely on emotion.
How much does it cost to keep and train the sharks to hold still?
I remember a report (no idea where and when) about young people in Turkey who got serious health problems because they where sandblasting jeans and the sand got into their lungs.
Retrain these workers to sand wear patterns on distressed buggy whips!
The hard part is training the frikken' sharks to run the laser properly - they keep trying to shoot each other.
...that you have a big dick, and you will never lack for pussy. You might have to bang a few fatties or uglies at the start to prime the sexual gossip pump, but that's a small price to pay for prime future pussy.
Unless you DON'T have a big dick. Then yeah, you have no hope.
You don't find Levi's that aren't pre-worn, but Target has store brand or lesser know jeans like Lee that are just denim, no treatment. You can get them with thick or thin fabric, usually. I think I've also seen plain denim jeans at Costco.
More evidence AI is taking our jobs. My dad was a jeans distresser and so was my grandad. I was a jeans distresser. I have now been replaced by AI jeans distressers. What am I supposed to do, retrain as a jeans bleacher? No one even wears bleached jeans in 2018.
just like I do my Guitars...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
For example, every pair were hand rubbed which essentially gives them an authenticity and unique element...does using a laser make them less "unique". Say one worker was more agitated that day, and took out their frustration on some pairs of jeans. Just sayin that balance is nice to have...a teeter totter with an automated"second person" isn't the same!
Coincidentially right around the time Chinese money flooded American capital and ruined everything. Totally coincidential.
This really is a first world problem.
No normal person would buy new clothes that looked worn out.
According to many here, from what has been posted in the past, this is not an issue as they all just will take a job as "laser maintenance and repair" person.
Or this is somehow different to people who will lose their job when cars start to become self driving.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I always used to buy my jeans from Levi's, and many years ago they were some of the most consistently manufactured jeans around - in particular, when most of their manufacturing was done in the USA. Much more recently I went to buy two pairs of (theoretically) identical jeans - same cut, same waist, same inseam, differing only by color - and they could have hardly been less similar when I tried them on. Then I checked the tag and realized one pair was made in South America and the other in Southeast Asia - again on the rack they differed only in color. Yet one was uncomfortably tight to button and the other was so loose in the waist that it would nearly fall off of me without a belt.
Their customer service has not been terribly useful either.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Your post suggests that all productivity improvements go only into corporate coffers and no real price decreases. However here is how it works in the real world. There is still inflation, the costs of making jeans will rise due to other factors and, yes, for a short time the company may reap increased profits, in the long run it will be forced to keep its prices lower than it would have otherwise or lose market share. Also it could be that buying the lasers and developing the tech will mean that it may be some years before it realizes all those said profits, by which time inflation or competition from someone else who has had productivity gains as well and has been able to lower costs (or keep them the same) will force them to keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been.
This isn’t to say there isn’t corporate greed, but lets not act like every productivity gain is an evil thing of no benefit to consumers.
As to displaced workers hopefully Levi is large enough to shuffle most to other activities. If not and they are treated very unfairly during termination, then Levi can feel the rightfully backlash of public scorn at that time.
Letter To Iran
Will it cut the volume of chemicals used or just the variety?
Twinstiq, game news
I remember seeing a documentary a few years ago were it stated that sanding (or otherwise known as sandblasting) has been outlawed in almost all developed countries because it develops incurable lung diseases on the workers. Only a few 3rd world countries still allow this process. I also doubt that the workers in those countries are aware of the problem that they are risking their lives for a few bugs.
Only idiots buy pre-worn jeans.
Then you won't need to have someone sand your jeans for you.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
last Saturday and it was a pair of Levis Big Bang phat pants. Wore them to an old school Acid Techno/House rave.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
If we envision this trend continuing, what does that mean for the market for mass-produced products? Who buys them? Do we end up with vast quantities of efficiently produced products that an ever increasing mass of unemployed people can't even buy? How does that help the bottom line?
And I bet their all cut using a big die press
What effect dosanding chemicals have on workers?
What effect do those trace amounts of sanding chemicals have on consumers?
Once the AI can program itself, a good 50 years away, people will be obsolete technology. Why would the robots want to keep parasitic humans around?
60 years ago, when Parkinson wrote his great paper, there were no computers. Things like banks and tax offices ran entirely by hand. Rows of clerks, possibly with mechanical adding machines.
But those bureaucracies have grown, not shrunk. That is a clear, amazing fact. All that computer organization over 60 years has produced no reduction in the size of bureaucracies. Not cynical, but actually true.
For unlike the finite capacity for the human gut, our desire for rules and regulations, processes and procedures knows no bounds.
As Parkinson pointed out, the size of a bureaucracy is governed by many factors, none of which relate to the amount of work to be performed. So as machines free up productive labour, they will all just end up being petty bureaucrats. Which does not require any great intelligence, just conformity with an ever growing body of rules.
They're turning kids into slaves;
They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what's the real cost?
'Cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper.
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers
When you got little kid slaves making them?
What are your overheads?