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ロボットか人か？

Warehouse inventory counting

Cycle counter with a scanner and lift vs Autonomous inventory drone (RaaS)

Whirrworkによるモデル推計であり、事実ではありません。 方法論 · 予測の検証記録

人 · 年額$153,903Manual cycle counts
ロボット · 年額$66,321Inventory drone as a service
回収期間1 か月
逆転する年すでにBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

アメリカ合衆国 · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

自分の数字で計算する

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作業量
仮定

Pallet locations counted per month (e.g. 15,000 locations twice).

仮定

Hours per day the drone may fly.

仮定

Days per month.

仮定

Months per year.

人員
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 53-7065.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

仮定

Locations per person-hour with an order picker or reach truck for high bays.

仮定

Lift truck cost per counter-hour. Default 0 ignores it.

ロボット
仮定

Locations per drone-hour.

算出値 Actel Robotics progressivelogistics.com

Corvus One small-DC quotes $2,500-$4,500/month; Langham reported about $4,000/month per Gather AI drone.

仮定

WMS integration and site setup.

仮定

Contract years.

仮定

Availability (charging).

仮定

Work lost to faults.

仮定

Locations that still need a person (unreadable labels, exceptions to resolve).

仮定

Staff minutes per drone-hour.

仮定

kWh per drone-hour.

仮定

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

資金
仮定

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

仮定

Years in the NPV comparison.

仮定

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

仮定

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

仮定

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

結果

選択肢月額年額Per unit (location)初期費用回収期間Break-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
人 Manual cycle counts 比較の基準 $12,825$153,903$0.428— — — —
ロボット Inventory drone as a service $5,527$66,321$0.184$5,000 0.7 か月 21%
Utilisation 64%
 $408,189

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Inventory drone as a service5-year NPV vs baseline: Inventory drone as a serviceWorkloadlow value: 5000 → -$79,981high value: 150000 → $2,233,558Human output per hourlow value: 30 → $1,006,597high value: 120 → $108,985Hourly wagelow value: 14.36 → $290,975high value: 21.54 → $525,403Robot output per hourlow value: 80 → $224,545high value: 300 → $414,491Human equipment cost per hourlow value: 0 → $408,189high value: 8 → $578,312Work that stays humanlow value: 0.05 → $440,733high value: 0.3 → $278,010Employer on-cost multiplierlow value: 1.2790000000000001 → $346,670high value: 1.579 → $469,708Subscription per robot per mo…low value: 2500 → $457,507high value: 4500 → $358,870Financing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → $440,556high value: 0.12 → $369,841$408,1890low valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Whirrworkによるモデル推計であり、事実ではありません。

Chart単位あたりの人件費 (基本), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (基本), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が速い), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が遅い). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.$0.00$0.10$0.20$0.30$0.402026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / locationscenario range単位あたりの人件費 (基本)単位あたりのロボット費用 (基本)単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が速い)単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が遅い)Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estima…

逆転する年: すでに

What the spreadsheet misses

安全性
Fewer people raised on lifts to read labels at height.
品質
More frequent counts; accuracy depends on labels.
柔軟性
People also fix the discrepancies they find.
Edge cases
Blocked aisles, shrink-wrap glare and missing labels.
Customer experience
Fewer stockouts from phantom inventory.
Jobs and redeployment
Walmart dropped shelf-scanning robots in 2020 partly because staff could do the checks during other work: count what your people already do.
規制
Indoor flight is usually unregulated; workplace safety rules apply.

関連

このページの出典

注記と出典は英語です。英語版が正式な版です。

  1. Corvus One inventory drone, small distribution centre (<150,000 sq ft): about $2,500-$4,500 per month RaaS Actel Robotics, 2026 · vendor
  2. Langham Logistics pays about $4,000 per month per Gather AI inventory drone Indianapolis Business Journal via Progressive Logistics, 2026-10
  3. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  4. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  5. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  6. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  7. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  8. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  9. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  10. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  11. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  12. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  13. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013