優衣庫下狠手，把90%的員工換成了機器人

At a warehouse in Tokyo’s Ariake district once mainly staffed by people, robots are now doing the work of inspecting and sorting the clothing housed there by Japanese retailer Uniqlo.

東京有名的一家倉庫的員工從前以人爲主，但現在由機器人來對日本零售商優衣庫儲存在那裏的衣服進行檢查和分類。

The company recently remodeled the existing warehouse with an automated system created in partnership with Daifuku, a provider of material handling systems. Now that the system is running, the company revealed during a walkthrough of the new facility, Uniqlo has been able to cut staff at the warehouse by 90%. The warehouse can now also operate 24 hours a day.

該公司最近與大福公司合作在現有倉庫裏裝配了全自動系統，大福公司提供貨物搬運系統。該系統運營以後，公司在新設備展示中表示優衣庫可以裁掉倉庫裏90%的員工，而且倉庫現在可以一天24小時運行。

The Japan News described how the automation works:

日本新聞媒體對自動化操作情況做了如下描述：

The robotic system is designed to transfer products delivered to the warehouse by truck, read electronic tags attached to the products and confirm their stock numbers and other information.

機器人系統被設計用來轉移卡車送到倉庫的貨物，閱讀貼在貨物上的電子標籤，並確認庫存數量和其他信息。

When shipping, the system wraps products placed on a conveyor belt in cardboard and attaches labels to them. Only a small portion of work at the warehouse needs to be done by employees, the company said.

運貨時該系統會將放置在傳送帶上的貨品用紙箱打包，再貼上標籤。公司表示倉庫中只有少量工作需要由員工完成。

The Tokyo warehouse is just a first step in a larger plan for Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing. It has announced a strategic partnership with Daifuku with the goal of automating all Fast Retailing’s brand warehouses in Japan and overseas. Uniqlo plans to invest 100 billion yen (about $887 million) in the project over an unspecified timeframe. (The Japan News reported that it costs about 1 billion to 10 billion yen to automate an existing warehouse.)

這僅僅是東京倉庫的第一步，它還爲優衣庫的總公司迅銷公司制定了更大的計劃，已經宣佈和大福公司形成戰略伙伴關係，目標是在日本和海外所有迅銷公司旗下品牌倉庫實現自動化操作。優衣庫計劃對該項目投資1千億日元（約8.87億美元），投資時間待定。（日本新聞報道稱爲一個現有倉庫配備全自動系統需要約10億-100億日元）。

Uniqlo believes the system will help it minimize storage costs and, importantly, deliver products faster around the world. The company has set a target of 3 trillion yen (about $26.6 billion) in annual revenue. Last year its revenue was about 1.86 trillion yen.

優衣庫認爲該系統有助於將存儲成本降到最低，而且非常重要的是能將貨品更快地運送到世界各地。該公司設定了年收入3萬億日元（約266億美元）的目標，去年年收入約爲1.86萬億日元。

Actually, this is not the first time for this brand to try something like this.

其實這並非該品牌首次進行類似嘗試。

Indeed on November, 4th, 2016 at Marché Saint-Germain in Paris, the Japanese brand Uniqlo 'hired' a new staff member : a humanoid robot. 

2016年11月4日日本品牌優衣庫在巴黎聖日耳曼“僱傭了”一個新員工：一個仿真機器人。

It leads us to an essential question that the world already had in mind while the labour force were replaced by machines in many industries : Will robots replace every human's job ? 

這使我們聯想到了一個全世界都在考慮的根本問題，雖然很多產業中機器已經取代了勞動力，但機器人會取代人類所有的工作嗎？

Actually you may already have heard of this robot called Pepper as it was first disclosed in 2014 (but launched in 2015) that French company Aldebaran Robotics (bought over by the Japanese company SoftBank) had created this robot. 

其實你可能聽說過2014年首次公開（2015年上市）機器人Pepper的法國公司Aldebaran Robotics（被日本SoftBank公司收購）已經做出了這樣的機器人。

This robot has the capacity of perceiving the main human emotions from which it can change what it says, based on the emotion of its interlocutor. 

這款機器人能感知人類主要的情緒，並根據與其對話的人的情緒改變要說的話。

In big cities in Japan, it is almost common to see Pepper or any other robots in the entry of some stores but it is still rare in France or even in any other country of Europe. 

在日本的大城市，在商店入口處幾乎都能看見Pepper或其他機器人，但在法國甚至其他歐洲國家仍然少見。

（翻譯：菲菲）