Frameworks like Lean Six Sigma and business process management (BPM) first gained traction because they promised clarity in the chaos—a structured way to bring order to messy, sprawling operations. Lean Six Sigma emphasized statistical rigor and quality control; BPM created end-to-end maps of how work should flow across departments. Both offered a repeatable way to…
Warp can’t automate long-haul trucking or short-range delivery, so it’s working on what it can potentially change: the workflows inside its warehouses.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Are we ready to hand AI agents the keys? In recent months, a new class of agents has arrived on the scene: ones built using large language models. Any action that can be…
On May 6, 2010, at 2:32 p.m. Eastern time, nearly a trillion dollars evaporated from the US stock market within 20 minutes—at the time, the fastest decline in history. Then, almost as suddenly, the market rebounded. After months of investigation, regulators attributed much of the responsibility for this “flash crash” to high-frequency trading algorithms, which…
Lithium-ion batteries have some emerging competition: Sodium-based alternatives are starting to make inroads. Sodium is more abundant on Earth than lithium, and batteries that use the material could be cheaper in the future. Building a new battery chemistry is difficult, mostly because lithium is so entrenched. But, as I’ve noted before, this new technology has…