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Foxconn Invests $210 Million To Build New Production Line For Apple
redletterdave writes "On Monday, Foxconn agreed to invest $210 million to help Apple build out a new production line for 'unspecified components.' The 40,000-square-meter plant plans to hire roughly 35,800 new employees to help assemble parts for either desktop and laptop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, or possibly even new products or devices. Apple projects the plant's annual output between $949 million to $1.1 billion, and also estimates the import and export value at roughly $55.8 million."
Huh? Huai'an city is not in Hainan. It's in Jiangsu province, about 100km west of Shanghai. Hainan is an island off the southern coast of China, near Vietnam.
The China Daily article says there are two separate projects. Foxconn is both building this plant in Huai'an and starting up a new manufacturing base down in Hainan. The Hainan facility is not necessarily Apple-oriented.
It's called shifts. Likely 3 of them. An average 3.6 square meters is definitely small (surely less when you subtract equipment) but it isn't 1.2.
If you watched the Foxconn video (or seen any industrial production video), you'd see that for certain types of assembly it's cheaper and easier to get people to do it than to mechanize.
Mechanization requires lots of tooling and is relatively hard to change once built. It's easier to just hire a lot of people and change their procedures when needed.
There's no secret to mass assembly - it's just a serious logistical challenge. Everything needs to be specified, exactly.
There's also some loss of information in TFA. The submitter changed "a plant that covers 40,000 square meters" to "a 40,000 square meters plant". Quite possible there will be more than one floor. A plant with five floors covering 40,000 square meters would be a 200,000 square meter plant.