The Dangerous Economist: Why It’s So Difficult for Robots to Make Your Nike Sneakers

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Trump sees tariffs as a way to boost U.S. manufacturing, but Nike’s struggle to move production from Asia is a cautionary tale

By Jon Emont of The Wall Street Journal.

I've done alot of posts on robots (links to them are below). They don't always replace workers. They might complement workers or allow workers to do other things. They don't necessarily cause the unemployment rate to go up.

Excerpts:

"Starting in 2015, Nike poured millions into an ambitious effort to partly automate what has always been a highly labor-intensive industry. At the time, rising labor costs in China and advances in manufacturing techniques such as 3-D printing opened the possibility of finding a new way to make shoes that would rely on fewer workers."
"The company aimed for large-scale automated production in under a decade, which it said would save on labor costs and allow it to deliver new models of shoes to Americans faster."
"Nike and Flex [Flex, an American manufacturer that had helped Apple set up a complex factory] established new production lines that used machines commonly seen in electronics manufacturing—but rarely shoemaking—such as a “pick and place” machine that is known for mounting components onto circuit boards. The machines were supposed to build the upper part of a shoe, knit fabric, add logos and glue the sole.
The effort quickly ran into trouble.
The robots struggled to handle the soft, squishy and stretchy parts that are integral to shoemaking. Shoe fabrics also expand and contract depending on the temperature, while in shoemaking no two soles are exactly alike.
Human workers can adapt to such challenges, but it proved difficult for machines.'
"As a result, factory production never became as automated as envisioned. As shoe production increased, the factory personnel swelled to 5,000, about twice as many as originally planned and costing more than a similar workforce in Vietnam. Task after task proved challenging to automate, like the delicate work of gluing soles to the upper part of the shoe."
"A central problem was also the huge variety of shoes Nike produces. For decades, American consumer companies have given designers nearly unlimited freedom to dream up the coolest products and relied on Asian manufacturers to deliver them. And unlike cars or iPhones, shoe models are changing all the time."
"At one point, it took the Flex team eight months to figure out how to automate a way to put the Nike swish on a shoe, only for Nike to move onto a new shoe line for which the method Flex developed no longer worked."
"Flex and Nike wound up the project by early 2019. By then, Under Armour had stopped mentioning to investors its “Project Glory” mission to make shoes in the U.S. That year Adidas, which had also faced challenges producing complex shoes with robots, said it would close down production in Atlanta and Germany."

Amazon’s New Robotic Warehouse Will Rely Heavily on Human Workers: The 3 million-square-foot distribution center in Shreveport, La., demonstrates the limits of automation in big logistics operations (2024)

Two recent articles on robots and human workers (2024)

"The Battle Over Robots at U.S. Ports Is On: Striking dockworkers are back to work—but disagreement over automation stands in the way of lasting peace"

"At a Brooklyn Warehouse, Robots Are Reshaping the Grocery-Delivery Business: A discount grocer’s pilot program is using robots to help complete orders—and keep prices down"

Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s are not reducing employment (2024)

The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work: AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants (2024)

Meet the Robots Slicing Your Barbecue Ribs (2024)

Robots writing science fiction (2024)

Robots Are Looking Better to Detroit as Labor Costs Rise (2024)

Are robot vehicles replacing workers in freight yards, warehouses and seaports or are they being used because it is hard to find workers? (2023)

Sweetgreen Hires Kale-Shooting Robots to Speed Up Service (2023)

“Why did the human stare at the glass of orange juice?” “They were trying to concentrate.” (2023) (this post it partly about jokes written by ChatGPT)

Will technology cost artists their job? (2023)

Rent a robot for Christmas? Makes sense if you are a logistics company (2022)

Walgreens Turns to Prescription-Filling Robots to Free Up Pharmacists (2022)

Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation (2022)

Warehouses Look to Robots to Fill Labor Gaps, Speed Deliveries (2021)

Is unemployment still high because of structural unemployment? (2021)