Toyota to Employ Advanced Robots

Posted by michael on Friday January 7, 2005 @12:30PM from the robots-are-born-free-and-everywhere-are-in-chains dept.

olegalexandrov writes "Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labor shortage. The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese laborers, a report said on Thursday." The Motley Fool has a humorous take, and Toyota emphasizes that goodlife, err, humans will continue to have a place in Toyota factories.

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Re:What?!?! by gstoddart · 2005-01-07 13:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Labor shortage? How about outsourcing (insourcing?) some of those jobs to Detroit where there are surplus autoworkers?

For a Japanese manufacturer, outsourcing to Detroit probably doesn't represent a cost savings or an efficiency boost.

You don't have to pay benefits to a robot, and they work longer shifts.

North American workers simply aren't willing to view themselves as cheap labour to pick up the slack from more expensive places to do manufacturing.

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