The intersection of Interstate 4 and Florida's Highway 27 is a well-known spot, the point where the clutter of Orlando'due south theme parks exhausts itself and the erstwhile Florida of citrus groves and sandy ridges picks upwards.

There is a McDonald's at this intersection, and in a booth on a recent Friday, Don Vaughn is having lunch with his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. They've driven 12 miles to this McDonald's, drawn past the power of a dawning technology.

"It'due south fantastic," says Vaughn, a local. "I love information technology. It's the new age."

"We tell [the machine] the way nosotros want it," says Chrystal, Vaughn'south daughter-in-law, "and we know it's done right." Done right, in Chrystal's case, means no onions.

The liberating new-age engineering science in utilise right in that location inside the McDonald's–a pair of kiosks bolted to the floor near the front counter–allows customers to utilize a impact screen to order their Big Macs and Happy Meals exactly the way they desire them. Vaughn, Chrystal, and Heather drove to this item McDonald's–as they practise regularly–just to guild their nutrient on the touch screens themselves.

In the tumult of lunchtime at a busy McDonald's, and in the tumult of the U.S. economy, the slim, silverish machines would exist easy to overlook, though each is every bit tall as a person and sports a colorful screen. At that place are but 85 of them, installed in 48 franchised restaurants, all without the assist of McDonald'due south itself.

The visitor quietly putting self-ordering computers in McDonald's is Kinetics Inc., whose cocky-service technology has already swept through the airline manufacture, with results that have amazed executives and customers alike. Every day, hundreds of thousands of airline customers bank check themselves in, cheerfully doing piece of work that used to be washed by thousands of airline ticket agents. Kinetics' self-service vision could take the aforementioned touch on on the fast-nutrient business organisation every bit information technology has had on airlines–and fast nutrient and airlines are just the kickoff. As well checking ourselves in for flights at the airport, nosotros may before long be checking out rental cars at our destinations without talking to anyone, and and so checking into hotels at a antechamber kiosk that, kickoff, displays a diagram of all the rooms available then, later on we choose one, pops out a room key.

If you lot look at the dozens of Kinetics self-service machines lined upwards at Delta's terminal in Atlanta, or Northwest's in Minneapolis, or Continental'south in Houston, you lot'll brainstorm to sympathize the role they're already having in a powerful economic trend: the ability of U.S. businesses to exercise more and more with the same, or fewer, workers. Labor productivity grew at an astounding almanac charge per unit of ix.5% during the third quarter of last yr, the largest quarterly bound since 1983. That's an unsustainable step (and it dropped to a more than typical 2.6% in the fourth quarter), but information technology is part of a steady trend that has productivity increasing in the past two years at more twice the historical pace. Crudely put, the numbers mean the work that required 100 people in 2000 requires just 89 people today.

Kinetics and its kiosks are capitalizing on this productivity tendency and driving it. The visitor, which makes about two-thirds of the nation's airport cocky-check-in machines, is an all-only-unknown Lake Mary, Florida, outfit. Although Kinetics does everything itself–from designing and manufacturing its ain machines, to servicing them in the field–information technology is tiny. Last year, tens of millions of airline customers checked themselves in on machines that were designed, produced, and supported by only 67 employees.

It'southward unlikely that such machines will mean the cease of ticket agents and rental-auto clerks. Instead, those jobs will change–and in that location may somewhen be more of them.

But the impact of Kinetics and its kiosks isn't as obvious or as scary equally the sensationalist headline those numbers might suggest–"67-Person Company Puts Thousands of Airline Employees Out of Work!" True, airlines have been shedding jobs in the by few years, but that's largely due to industry woes that take nothing to do with automation. And it's unlikely that these machines will mean the end of ticket agents, rental-machine clerks, or the forepart-desk staff at hotels. Instead, those jobs will modify–and eventually, there may exist more of them, not fewer, considering of cocky-service. That seems counterintuitive, but employment has actually grown in other service businesses that accept been automated. At the dawn of the cocky-service banking historic period in 1985, for example, the U.s.a. had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the The states had 352,000 ATMs–and 527,000 bank tellers. ATMs notwithstanding, banks do a lot more than than they used to and have a lot more branches than they used to.

Instead, the story of Kinetics offers a glimpse of the connected power of computers, automation, and the Internet to transform our lives as both workers and consumers–a ability that, far from having plateaued, is only but getting started. Information engineering hasn't touched lots of things that are only waiting to be automated, computerized, or kiosked. That they will be automatic seems inevitable. But the results aren't so clear. Will all these smart machines create more jobs and free workers to tackle more than rewarding, more than complex tasks? Or volition we gradually encounter the disappearance of a whole category of frontline workers? Volition kiosks get out customers feeling well cared for and more than closely linked to the businesses that employ them, or frustrated and trapped in a real-globe version of phonation-mail service hell? The answers take a lot more than to do with how a company uses such machines than with the engineering itself.

Kinetics, which delivered its get-go machines to Alaska Airlines in 1996, has transformed a kludgy, aggravating part of the air-travel experience that has long resisted improvement. In December, 70.3% of Northwest Airlines' passengers checked themselves in for their flights, the majority using Kinetics' kiosks, the remainder online, a role made possible past Kinetics' software. That's upwardly from fifty% in May and 20% in 2001.

Entering an arena dominated by muscular global players such equally NCR, Diebold, Siemens, and IBM, Kinetics has consistently beaten the giants in head-to-head competition for business. Kinetics' technology is running non just the self-check-in machines of Alaska, Continental, Delta, and Northwest, only also AirTran, Hawaiian, and Frontier. In March, Kinetics won the business of United Airlines, which had been using IBM. United plans to begin installing Kinetics' machines immediately. The company'due south software makes possible the newer Internet check-in procedure for many airlines; it runs the ticket-issuing organization for Orbitz; and, along with its hardware, is spreading to gates at many airports to speed boarding.

Unlike many data-age companies, there is nothing virtual nearly Kinetics. The company takes pride in doing every-thing: Employees write the software, blueprint the hardware, and staff a storefront factory in Lake Mary. A field group of 12 technicians keeps the airport kiosks running at what Continental says is 99.5% reliability. And CEO, president, and founder David Melnik says privately held Kinetics is profitable and has been so almost since its first contract. "Companies multiples of our size don't accept the impact on culture and business that we exercise," he says. "That'southward a pretty radical thing. I think it's pretty cool."

At Continental Airlines, 66% of U.S. passengers check themselves in at Kinetics kiosks. "We never thought it would go above 25%," says Scott O'Leary, Continental'south senior manager in charge of airdrome self-service for passengers. Equally for the lines that used to bedevil even business travelers, says O'Leary, "We are essentially queueless." And once customers are standing at a kiosk, he says, "the hateful check-in time is 66 seconds. For customers with no bags, it'south 30 seconds." At big airports, your aeroplane is more likely to stand up in line to take off than you lot are to check in.

Self-service has begun to pop up in so many places–photo-processing kiosks in drugstores, self-testing kiosks to renew driver's licenses, automated cost payment–that the technology has quickly gone from novel to unremarkable. But self-service often feels like the opposite of service, or information technology feels as if the client has been made an involuntary, unpaid worker. Whatsoever the efficiency of pumping your own gas, doing and then doesn't make the experience of filling your tank whatever better; depending on the weather, doing it yourself is frequently downright unpleasant.

But here'due south something every airline rider knows: Kinetics' machines really improve the job they automate. They don't only make the experience quicker, they arrive better. Jeffrey Lammers, who used to design nuclear weapons and until February was Kinetics' head of hardware applied science, says, "Y'all won't detect anyone who flies a lot who won't just hug these machines."

The cocky-service kiosk shows you a seat map of the airplane y'all're boarding–y'all run across where your seat is, you lot see what seats are yet open, and you're gratis to pick 1 you similar better. And only you know that later on your first option–alley, far frontward, but not bulkhead–and your second choice–window, far forrad, but not bulkhead–your third choice is any row where there'due south an empty middle seat. Except not farther back than row 20, because you don't want to wait xv minutes to become off the aeroplane. So there's your quaternary, fifth, and sixth choice. No ticket agent has the patience to walk through this with any rider, permit alone every passenger. The kiosk handles it in seconds. And it tin be programmed to operate in 12 languages. "It'south the end of the 'veil of secrecy' at check-in," says Continental'due south O'Leary. "It's a quick, informative check-in, instead of continuing in line for client service." When this kind of automation is done right, Kinetics' CEO Melnik says, "People don't perceive it as technology, they perceive it as an enabler in their life."

Melnik, 39, is one of those smart, restless souls who stumble into entrepreneurship because it makes so much more sense than working for companies that are likewise big, too slow, and besides hesitant. A college dropout whose real passion is marine biological science (for a while, he performed every bit "Flipper Boy," cavorting with dolphins at the Miami Seaquarium), he started the company that became Kinetics in 1988 after working as a sales amanuensis for a Tampa travel bureau. The feel of selling and delivering airline tickets to small businesses got him wondering why those tickets couldn't be handled more like coin in ATMs and less like a special production that had to be "produced" at a travel bureau. "I got interested in this, and it hooked me," he says.

Melnik worked with NCR on several projects, including plans to bring an early on kiosk to the Trump Shuttle in New York's LaGuardia Aerodrome. He worked with Siemens on a project for Lufthansa. He also worked as a waiter, accepted startup funding from his mother in law, and lived for several years off the teacher's salary of his wife, Cindy. He can write software, and he can "bend metallic" to make kiosks.

It took about eight years of persistence for the engineering, the airline heed-set, and the customers to take hold of upward with Melnik's vision. He sold Alaska Airlines on those showtime machines, chosen Orcas, using a cardboard mock-up.

How this kind of simple merely powerful self-service engineering ripples through businesses and the economy e'er looks easier to predict than information technology is. The start passenger elevator in the world, created by Elisha Otis, was installed in a New York department shop in 1857; it wasn't until 1950–nearly a century later on–that the Otis Elevator Co. came up with the engineering science for self-service elevators. In 1955, 500,000 people in the Usa were working as lift operators, jobs that were virtually all gone less than 10 years later.

Just as it turns out, the affect of even the most pervasive self-service, on productivity and on customers, is easy to misinterpret. Kinetics' machines meliorate the productivity of airline ticket agents–but not by allowing the ticket agents to practise more work, more than quickly. They allow the ticket agents to preside over more work being done–in this case, past the customers. And it may be this sort of productivity improvement that helps make possible the "jobless recovery," in which companies manage to grow without hiring new employees or without recalling those who take been laid off.

Indeed, when you use a self-check-in machine, y'all tin can't help but wonder about the thousands of airline employees who have lost their jobs since September xi. Final yr, Northwest flew 12% fewer passengers than in 2000. But it did so with 25% fewer employees. If Delta had been staffed in 2003 the mode information technology was in 2000, it would accept employed two,500 more people. Since the terminate of 2000, Kinetics' three biggest customers–Delta, Northwest, and Continental–have shed some 37,000 employees, enough people to run all of Northwest today.

Of grade, the airlines are a complicated example–their business was out of whack before the September xi attacks, and the attacks hit the airline business harder than any other. Just even where the touch on of such machines looks obvious, labor tends to squirt around the economy in unpredictable, fifty-fifty counterintuitive, ways. Although Continental now has 780 kiosks in 130 airports, with the machines handling the vast bulk of passengers, the airline has reduced the number of airport agents past only four% since September xi.

Melnik likes to say that each Kinetics self-check-in car, at an initial cost of between $half-dozen,000 and $10,000, takes the place of two-and-a-half ticket agents, considering the machine is available (at to the lowest degree) from 6 a.1000. to 9 p.g., seven days a week–or nearly the number of hours that many agents would work. Only that both understates and overstates the machines' impact.

Kinetics has installed iii,800 self-check-in machines for airlines–but 9,500 ticket agents have not lost their jobs. At the aforementioned time, at airports in Atlanta and Houston, where there are banks of dozens of check-in machines, the kiosks handle surges of passengers hands and quickly. No airline can have l or 100 ticket agents waiting to take bags and issue boarding passes; but many airlines have that many bank check-in terminals in individual airports.

At Continental, O'Leary acknowledges that the airline is using Kinetics' engineering to grow traffic without calculation staff and costs. "It's absolutely true that earlier self-service, we were adding staff and [aerodrome] existent manor like you wouldn't believe," he says. "Once you have self-service deployed, you can absolutely comprise those costs. But nosotros still argue nosotros are getting meliorate productivity and service out of our existing agents."

O'Leary is sensitive to the perception–from both staff and passengers–that Kinetics' kiosks take jobs. But he argues that they're really but eliminating tiresome, repetitive work and freeing agents to deliver real client service to passengers who don't like the machines, or have more than complicated problems. "My position has evolved," he says. "Watching anyone do clerical transactions over and again just looks like wasted time. Having [a ticket agent] punch the aforementioned combination of 122 keys over and over and over once more–that'south just wasted effort in the 21st century. It's not the social club I call back of as productive."

Hither's how persuasive the cocky-service machines were to Gary and Kim Moulton, who own the McDonald's at the intersection of Interstate 4 and Highway 27 in primal Florida, and five more McDonald's in that area. The day in early 2002 when the very first auto was delivered and hooked up, the Moultons ordered 9 more than. "I said, 'Tell us when you can install the remainder of them,' " says Gary.

For the Moultons, the self-service ordering machines have been one surprise afterward some other. "The first surprise was, the first 24-hour interval it went in, customers said to usa, 'It's not just fast, information technology's not just authentic–this is fun!' " says Kim. One college girl was and so amazed past the machines, she ran up and hugged Gary. "She said, 'Thanks, this is the greatest,' " he recalls, still amazed at the reaction. (The Moultons' favorite customer response comes at their highway shop, from tourists: "We don't take these up north.")

The Moultons expected the kiosks to handle 25%, maybe 30% of their volume; the average across all six stores subsequently ii years is 45%, and at a couple of them, more than than 50% of customers society themselves. People routinely stand in line for the kiosks, even when the counter is clear, with people gear up to take orders.

These machines are the work of Todd Liebman, who started a company chosen Quick Kiosk, which he sold to Kinetics final twelvemonth. Liebman is now head of a Kinetics sectionalization targeting "quick service" restaurants. Fast-food machines are both simpler and more complicated than the airline machines. They are simpler considering they don't accept to constantly and rapidly admission vital, secure databases such every bit rider manifests. They are more complicated because even a McDonald'southward luncheon menu offers many more than choices than an aeroplane seat map. You can specify the elements of your burger–cheese, lettuce, ketchup, mayonnaise–in a range of choices from none to extra. Everything from breakfast to dessert has a picture.

Hither's the double-reverse flip of productivity improvement: The kiosks have increased sales at McDonald's so much that the owners have had to add two more employees in each store.

The machines have actually increased the Moultons' labor costs–in two ways. Volume overall is upwards so much that they have had to add kitchen staff to brand more than food. And the Moultons have added "kiosk representatives" to greet customers and help them with the machines. "We've basically had to add ii people per store," says Gary. "1 in the kitchen, 1 for the kiosks, and nosotros haven't been able to take anyone off the front counters." But if labor costs take gone up, the Moultons' cost of labor equally a percentage of sales has dropped. "We've outpaced the labor costs with the increment in sales," says Gary.

That's the double-reverse flip of the productivity improvement: The kiosks make anybody at the Moultons' restaurants so much more than efficient–customers, kitchen staff, counter staff (who nonetheless accept all cash payments and deliver everyone's food)–that the Moultons have used the machines to increase their payroll. During the breakfast and lunch rushes, the kiosks requite the Moultons all kinds of headroom to proceed customers flowing and lines down.

In fact, unlike the airport, where you've already picked your airline before you face up cheque-in lines, the kiosks in a McDonald's can quickly increase business concern. One of the key factors in picking a fast-nutrient lunch spot is the wait. The forepart counter is a choke indicate. "I had a customer come up to me in 1 of our city stores recently," says Gary. "She said, 'I honey these kiosks, but it sure is hurting your business concern, considering at that place are no lines at lunch anymore!' "

The final surprise is that customers who utilize the kiosks spend more money. Considering the Moultons' volumes are so high, and have remained that way for then long, they know this is not some quirk of cocky-selection. On average, customers who use the machines spend $1 more per check. "With the size of our typical society, that'southward a 30% increase," says Gary. "That'southward huge."

The Moultons have a couple of ideas to explain why kiosk checks are bigger. The color kiosk screens are a peachy sales tool–yous can put the new McDonald's premium salads correct in the middle: 20% of customers who initially don't order a drink and are offered one (with a picture) buy it. Then there'due south the embarrassment factor. A substantial client might be reluctant to upsize the fries, or order 2 Big Macs, or an extra apple pie, from a counter person. The kiosk can't snicker, even to itself.

In some ways, the task issues are less stark at fast-food restaurants than at airline ticket counters. "Y'all are always going to need a substantial number of people to run a McDonald'due south," says Liebman. "You aren't going to automate the cooking of the food, you aren't going to automate the commitment of the food, not any fourth dimension shortly." The McDonald's kiosks accept payment past credit card; for cash, in terms of speed, it's still much quicker to have a customer stride to the counter and manus over coin to a person than feed bills and coins into a machine. And although information technology's piece of cake to lament the steady erosion of personal contact in commerce, McDonald'due south is rarely the source of richly satisfying service encounters.

Kinetics CEO Melnik has been working on travel kiosks for more than than 10 years and sees the kiosk business as a graveyard of featherbrained ideas. "We are an manufacture built on failures," he says. "People are enamored with kiosks. There are kiosks all over the place that no i uses: kiosks at the mall for shopping, kiosks for community information, kiosks for job listings."

Kinetics has been successful, Melnik says, because it isn't trying to trick-up an ordinary experience with a "multimedia experience." "We focus on transactions that already exist," he says, and he wants machines that make those transactions steadily simpler. "I remember that 10 years from now, serving yourself will be the default, versus now, where it'southward the exception," he says.

And when y'all raise your optics from the airline business organization–where Kinetics has had a dramatic touch on while selling 1,341 machines in 2003, manufacturing an average of merely 5 a day–the market size, and the potential for transformation, is stunning. Kinetics is already talking to rental-motorcar, cruise-ship, movie-theater, and hotel companies. The fast-food business alone could keep Kinetics busy for years. The top five fast-food chains by acquirement–McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bong, and Subway–have 48,000 restaurants in the U.s.a..

It's easy to envision the typical fast-food restaurant installing a couple of kiosks inside. But for bear on, the real key is the drive-through lane, where a Kinetics touch-screen kiosk, mounted on a pole and weatherproofed, could solve a problem that has confounded engineers for 40 years: our inability to be heard through the bulldoze-through speaker when we shout, "No mustard!"

Sidebar: So You Desire to Rent a Robot: The Dos and Don'ts of Cocky-Service Automation

Here are many reasons Kinetics' self-service check-in machines have swept through the nation'due south airports in just the last 3 years. Americans are much more comfy with computers than they were even five years ago. And the airlines desperately needed a more effective and efficient way of getting passengers through airports. Only Kinetics also thinks about self-service in ways that have fabricated its kiosks particularly appealing–to both passengers and airlines. Its principles of self-service design could exist constructive in all kinds of settings.

  • Automate to simplify, not to be beautiful. From vending machines to ATMs, the key is to automate a task that already needs to be done, not to invent a task so provide a computer to exercise it. In both airports and fast-food restaurants, kiosks provide a service that customers already need. And they exercise it with a consummate lack of self-aggrandizing flourish. Information technology'south not about the technology, it's about the task.
  • Seize with teeth off less than y'all can chew. The first versions of Kinetics' machines in airports didn't allow customers to upgrade to first class or go on standby for a different flight. Kinetics gave customers a run a risk to learn the system, and to develop confidence in a new engineering science, before adding layers of complexity. At present airport machines offering upgrades and alternate flights, and some airlines fifty-fifty use them to automatically rebook passengers when there are weather or equipment delays.
  • Utilise automation to ameliorate the task at hand. Airport kiosks change the feel of checking in by showing passengers a map of the aeroplane, where they are sitting, and where in that location are open seats. They make checking in not but faster, but better. McDonald's customers who use a Kinetics kiosk to identify their orders have absolute confidence that the "no onions" asking has been fabricated. In both cases, kiosks provide not just convenience but a sense of power and control.
  • Think, automation doesn't mean standardization. With each of its airline clients, Kinetics sits downwards with a fresh sheet of paper. Information technology tries to understand the priorities of each airline independently, in social club to craft a cocky-service experience that matches the airline's needs. For airlines that bear by and large business organization fliers, passengers are offered the fantabulous upgrade option quickly; for airlines carrying mostly tourists, the "How many bags are you checking?" screen may come sooner. Part of self-service is paying attention to how many different selves you lot might be serving.

Charles Fishman, a Fast Company senior writer, takes his airline seats aisle, far forward and his burgers with no mayo.