Foxconn CEO Backpedals On Planned Robot Takeover

itwbennett writes: For years now, Foxconn has been talking up plans to replace pesky humans with robot workers in its factories. Back in February, CEO Terry Gou said he expected the automation to account for 70 percent of his company's assembly line work in three years. But in the company's shareholder meeting Thursday, Gou said he had been misquoted and that "it should be that in five years, the robots will take over 30 percent of the manpower."

Comments

Re:Must have been visited by some serious looking

[Austerity Empowers]

Foxconn is one of the most NRE allergic companies I have ever seen. Unless you, as a customer, are willing to pay the NRE for machines on their assembly line for your product, they will attempt to use the most backwards, insanity inducing flow that can be conceived of. And you will say "Hey, there's a machine for that", and they'll say "Sure, for x amount we'll do that!". And so the negotiations begin, and in the end you realize you're paying for them to build up their factory. While you will both simultaneously make profit anyway, it is entirely because the labor is so cheap, and the environmental regulations so lax, that what you're really doing is hurting your own country to make some other people very rich at the expense of just about everyone else.

Then, if you are smart, you quit your job and leave the field. If Foxconn says "no robot labor" it must mean that some major customer has decided he is not going to pay for it. The idea that the Chinese government is actually protecting its labor is asinine, but they certainly do love the press that makes it seem like it.

Flexible Automation is Hard

[captjc]

As an engineer who works developing flexible automation solutions, this stuff is hard and it is expensive. Sure, it is worth it for companies in North America and Europe (our main customers) because people are even more expensive. But in countries like China and India, this is more of a prestige thing than an actual business case because people are cheap and flexible solutions are not.

Now, I say flexible because the problem with industrial automation is cheap or flexible, pick one. We can easily make a machine for cranking out a product, maybe even a for a family of products. However, if it is a low demand part or worse, is not expected to be around in 10+ years, that machine will be a large useless paperweight. Those that come to us are looking for solutions for when the next product is here, they can hire an engineer to reconfigure to make it work.

My guess, this guy make a prediction without knowing the reality of actual automation and was forced to eat his words.

Re:Cheap labor economics

[HornWumpus]

You realize that all of Africa is smaller then China in terms of population and much more corrupt?

After China and India build a middle class offshoring is more or less done. The remaining shit holes are too small and corrupt to be worth the effort.

Most smaller nations (e.g the Baltic states) will be 'first world' before China, certainly before India.