Slashdot Mirror
A US Apple Factory May Be Robot City
dcblogs writes "Apple's planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. A 2009 Apple video of its unibody manufacturing process has glimpses of highly automated robotic systems shaping the metal. In it, Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, described it. 'Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry,' he said. Apple has had three years to improve its manufacturing technology, and will likely rely heavily on automation to hold down labor costs, say analysts and manufacturers. Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory. First, a robot loads the aluminum block into the robo-machine that has a range of tools for cutting and drilling shapes to produce the complex chassis as a single precision part. A robot then unloads the chassis and sends it down a production line where a series of small, high-precision, high-speed robots insert parts, secured either with snap fit, adhesive bonds, solder, and a few fasteners, such as screws. At the end, layers, such as the display and glass, are added on top and sealed in another automated operation. Finally, the product is packaged and packed into cases for shipping, again with robots. "One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here," said Robert Atkinson, president of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."
If the reason it can be done in the US is automation there's very little difference in terms of employment -- The capital holders get to keep more of their capital, some Asians get fired, and very few Americans get hired.Sure the GDP will rise but that won't make the slightest difference for the unemployed.
Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I mean sure, on paper wages in the US look high, but then again there's next to no social security. There's no mandatory health insurance, there's little public infrastructure. In some places you even need to have a car.... at least that's what the typical prejudices say.
Apple is really NeXT 2.0. NeXT also had a fully automated computer assembly plant which was closed down when NeXT got out of the hardware business.
It's a myth that automation is bad because it leads to unemployment, but no-doubt that myth will be perpetuated here. Someone might even say "yeah it frees people up, frees them up to STARVE." Let's try to address that before it happens.
As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.
At one time, people would have spent virtually all their wealth on food. Because of improvements in automation, most people in the U.S. now spend a small fraction of their wealth on food, and this leaves extra money for, say, entertainment. At one time, having many people devote their whole lives to entertaining others would have seemed hugely wasteful -- those people should be out gathering food, after all -- but the wealth created by automation means that it's now a reality.
Some folks also make the claim that the new wealth will be concentrated in too few hands, and most people won't get wealthier. That, too, is false: automation makes things so cheap that just about everyone ends up owning things like microwaves, air conditioners, and computers -- things that before were reserved for the rich. Here's a good explanation of this: http://youtu.be/OkebmhTQN-4
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
In the past (and possibly now) the majority of jobs were repetitive low skilled (e.g. digging holes with a shovel, porter, assembly line worker, etc.) that just about anyone could do with a bit of on the job training. To leave school at 15 was not uncommon 20 years ago. The service / knowledge economy jobs require a much more highly skilled workforce. If you look at the previous transition from farm labourer to assembly line worker both jobs were relatively similar in terms of the type of personal attributes required.
My concern for society is that with education standards dropping coupled with an entitlement / victim mentality that many people are being disenfranchised and have little chance of contributing to society. We cannot stop change, but we should plan for it.