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."

Comments

Automation and unemployment

[Iamthecheese]

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.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[Black Parrot]

Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

I suggest zombies. They're more cost-effective than robots, cheaper to replace, and on their off hours can do even more to reduce the number of unemployed.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[artor3]

Having the robot factories here is good. We can tax the owners, tax the engineers, and use the proceeds to support all the unemployed people. Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment. We'll need to transition to a socialist economy to survive, and it will help if the factories are in our backyard.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[Yoda222]

Wait for the robot replacing the service economy. A robot in the future could cut your hair or goes in your heart to fix your valve. The service economy is not immune to automatization. And I'm looking forward to it.

Re:Automation and Unemployment

[sqrt(2)]

You're assuming that any person can climb the "ladder" of jobs as long as those jobs exist. In reality, people are forced to stop when they reach a rung beyond their ability. Most people can't be trained to be software engineers. Most people can't be trained to be scientists. Most people can't be trained to be artists of any quality. But while the height a person can climb is limited, there is no fundamental limit to automation. Eventually automation puts the starting rung out of reach of the average person and you are left with a mass of people unable to find employment anywhere in the economy, and limited in their intellectual capacity to be trained to ever get one of the scarce jobs that do exist.

For those people there are three options:

1. Grinding attrition to reduce their numbers through geographic isolation (prisons, slums, ghettos), violent crime (police abandon these areas and leave them to be ruled by gangs), and various poverty related causes of death (famine, malnutrition, lack of healthcare).
2. Revolt and forcefully take enough to survive from those who have surplus resources
3. Get folded into some sort of peaceful wealth redistribution system that provides for their needs and allows them to reach their personal potential, become educated up to their ability, raise a family, and live with dignity.

It's interesting to note that option one is the inevitable result of free-market economics. It's the only end game that can play out once automation really kicks off in a society that completely shuns anything that seems like socialism. It's also, in my opinion, probably the most likely starting point. I think we're going to see all three of those stages in the next 100-200 years. We are already in stage one in many respects.

Re:Automation and Unemployment

[LMariachi]

Believing that infinite growth is possible in an infinite world is perfectly logical. The problem is that we live in a finite world, and our growth-oriented model of capitalism strongly resembles cancer.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[Areyoukiddingme]

You're missing an important statistic, as is everyone else in this discussion (and nearly all the others on Slashdot lately). That statistic is called the participation rate, and according to the Department of Labor, it's the lowest it has been since World War II. The number I saw last was a participation rate of 65%. That is, only 65% of the working age population is actually working. We are, in fact, trending towards 50% unemployment right now, and we're far far closer than the unemployment numbers would have you believe. I haven't seen anybody plot out the trend line, but I suspect it will not be too many years before we're at 50%. In other words, we'll have basically returned to the time when women did not work outside the home.

There are plenty of people willing to argue this would be a good thing, and possibly it could have been. But it's not, and the reasons are too numerous to list, but I can hit the high points. First, wages have remained stagnate for two generations while the cost of living has soared, so it's no longer possible to support a family on a single income. Second, the divorce rate is way over 50%, so the nuclear family is effectively nonexistent. Third, people who have had the idea that they absolutely must work ground into their heads their entire lives who aren't able to find work become self-destructively depressed. Fourth, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there is no upper limit on automation, so we have no reason to believe the trend will stop at 50%. I could go on, but you get the idea.

The obvious retort is we never had a 100% participation rate, and of course that's true. But it was once much higher than it is now. Those jobs have, in fact, been lost. Permanently and completely. That's why those people are no longer counted as unemployed. They're counted as non-participating. Because they will not ever be employed again.

Re:Automation and Unemployment

[Iamthecheese]

No, your unsupported claim does not address my rhetorical question.

I've heard a lot of people spout this "poor people live like they're rich" line but I've been poor and I've seen poor people. in fact I'm poor now and I can tell you I'm not eligible for anything but the student loans that keep me alive at a sustenance level and VA health care because I was in the military and honorably discharged. My father is poor and all he gets is the social security he paid into. He's physically incapable of working and if he didn't keep a garden he would starve. My mother is poor and she's eligible for nothing. She works as a nursing assistant. One bad job and she'll literally be out on the street.

My friend is poor, she also physically cannot work. on a good day she manages to clean her house. She gets medicine, a CPAP machine, and 700 dollars per month.

I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[rasmusbr]

The cost of raw materials would be close zero since that is also basically labor.

The thing is that if we look back say 300 years we see that we already have close to free energy and close to free labor by 1712's standards. The average person today uses more energy than the richest king back then and the average farmer today produces as much food as a village of hundreds of people produced back then. We can produce so much food that we have to throw away or burn a significant fraction of it to prevent our food storage from overflowing...

And yet we still have problems like homelessness and people dying from curable diseases.

Re:Automation and unemployment

[Cwix]

We need to get rid of all of those damn socialist policies!!

Hwys and roads.
Public schools
FDA
EPA
National Parks
Medicare
Fire Departments
Police Departments
Anything with the word community in it (Like gardens)
Public libraries
Public colleges/universities

Stupid asshole. Some things are better when they are socialist, because we all reap benefits from them. Everyone in this country has reaped benefits from this list in one way or another. That does not mean we need to scrap capitalism. It does mean that we shouldn't dismiss "socialist" ideas out of hand.

Re:Automation and Unemployment

[Coisiche]

I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

The meme is more widespread than that because certain media outlets supporting a conservative agenda will perpetuate the idea at every opportunity so that many taxpayers will believe that the single, most significant reason for a country's economic woes is down to people living it large on welfare.

So long as the ruling elite can keep the in-fighting going among the people who massively outnumber them then they don't have to worry about attention being focused on them.

Re:Aren't the US already a low wage country?

[sqrt(2)]

All of that is true, more or less. Somehow it works for us, except when it doesn't.

I do envy the progress of Europe, but they face a different set of challenges. Imagine if all the nations of Europe were just states in a Federal Republic. Now imagine that Federal Government extracted billions of dollars each year to fund a military to kick around the world having adventures and spreading a specific political ideology. Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck. And after so many generations spent serving the Federal Government and its military people start really believing that's a better use of money than schools or trains or hospitals.

That's America.