The Robots are Here (and they are Clueless)

Last week, I read the amazing true story of what happened when Dave Meslin tried to order boxes from Amazon.

He ordered an item that said "25 shipping boxes". He received a box of granola. He indicated that he had gotten the wrong item, and was shipped more granola. He complained again and received a package of Harry Potter coasters. The system was clearly broken, but nobody could figure out how to fix it.

There are clear efficiency benefits in creating highly automated systems. However, if the regular people who support your operation don't understand how they work, your company is at the mercy of the automated monster you have created. The problem is that your employees don't know your system is malfunctioning, and your fancy executive dashboard is going to show everything operating fine. Only your customers, who are receiving the wrong items, know that your system has gone haywire.

In case you are wondering, the problem in this case was that the other items were shipped in the same boxes that Dave was trying to order. Amazons warehouse robot scanned the first barcode it could find and found the one from the box manufacturer before the one that actually represented the product in the box. That's why Amazon believes that a whole raft of different products are all instances of the object "25 shipping boxes".

Do you have a process in place that monitors what your operation looks like from the outside?

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