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Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Rented Robots Get the Worst Jobs and Help Factories Keep the Humans [Formic in The New York Times]

Formic’s Full Service Automation model was recently spotlighted in The New York Times as a solution for closing labor gaps, boosting productivity, and keeping U.S. manufacturing competitive.

Formic's customer, S&F Foods, emphasized how bringing in Formic's automation improved employees' lives: “We have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier,” said Mike Calleja, Plant Manager. “We are a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day.” Stacking it was “a backbreaking job,” he added.

Formic Founder and CEO Saman Farid spotlighted the broader impact, noting that some factories report having turnover rates of 100% for certain jobs. “When they adopt robots to do some of the most dull, dirty, dangerous, repetitive, backbreaking tasks, people stay, right? Because you’re not lifting heavy boxes 12 hours a day,” he said.

Read the full article here.  

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