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Foxconn Boosting Automated Production in China (digitimes.com)
Foxconn Electronics is automating production at its factories in China in three phases, aiming to fully automate entire factories eventually, according to general manager Dai Jia-peng for Foxconn's Automation Technology Development Committee. From a report on DigiTimes: In the first phase, Foxconn aims to set up individual automated workstations for work that workers are unwilling to do or is dangerous, Dai said. Entire production lines will be automated to decrease the number of robots used during the second phase, Dai noted. In the third phase, entire factories will be automated with only a minimal number of workers assigned to production, logistics, testing and inspection processes, Dai indicated.
Because that's what this kind of automation means. It means less choice because everything has to be the same, standard parts for the machines to churn them out at the rate necessary to make a profit on.
That means if you're holding your breath for Apple to release something that isn't preconfigured in the future, you might as well give up now and save yourself. The same will eventually be said for other computer & cellphone manufacturers. Configuration is about to become the premium option.
I wish there were more articles on automation in other areas besides manufacturing because most people think of assembly lines when automation occurs when that's a small fraction.
Legal research is automated. Much farming. Bookkeeping. And even software development.
It's great that productivity is increasing and having message loops and other boiler plate code generated is a blessing, but what are people who are displaced to do?
Speaking as one of them, retraining is a Fairy Tale. No one hires a middle aged entry level person. Oh! I retrained because it was impossible to get another job as a software developer at 50 - when I did get feedback, it was always "You don't have the skills." Yeah, whatever.
Kids - go into Medical. Luckily my wife is in medical and in her 50s, she has no problem with getting jobs. She is aghast at the stupidity of tech. She thought I was a lazy sack of shit until it came out in the news what a hard time we in tech have - aging out, H1-bs, offshoring, etc....
And I advise young people, unless you are in the 99.99th percentile - you have been offered full academic scholarships to MIT, Yale, Harvard or even Stanford - stay out of tech.
How many thousands of jobs must be lost overseas before you take action?!
Seems to me this is a reaction to the exercise Apple is doing to move back production to the US.
If they want to keep the business they get from Apple they have no choice other than this.
If you're able to automate everything then it makes sense to manufacture closer to point of sale. The thing that would stop that though is that all of the chip suppliers are also in the area.
Technology has become more-viable and less-expensive. It's more-reliable and takes less maintenance to design, build, and operate. Just like replacing hammers with frame nailers, replacing stacked canned goods with palletized goods on the wooden shipping pallet, and replacing armies of accountants with small offices and spreadsheets (and, eventually, with specialized accounting software), we've now started to replace 300-worker assembly lines with 21 logistics and maintenance staff keeping a more-automated line running smoothly.
Expect those $350 smart phones to become $50 smart phones. The materials still need mining; the factories making the components, however, can employ some of these lessons and bring their costs down.
With a $50 smart phone, you've got $300 left... and those $550 smart watches are now $90, and employ another 45 workers--that's 300 workers slimmed down to 46; and you're shipping smart phones and smart watches, meaning there's also 5-10 more truck drivers (well, okay, however many truckers it takes to support the shipping of all smart phones), and a half dozen more retail employees (again, to handle Amazon.com or Microcenter's stores and shelf stocking), and marketers... so not 46 jobs, but 90 or so.
That still leaves us with enough money in consumer pockets to pay some 200 workers--factory, transport, retail, the whole supply chain. Even more miners, farmers, and other materials producers. What are we going to buy, given cheap cell phones and smart watches? Are these "Smart Hats", "Smart Mugs", and "Smart Shoes" going to proliferate even more? Will everyone have something like the Eight Sleep bed cover, Nest thermostats, and a Flair zoning system in their house? I guess we can afford to pay people to make all this crap, since it takes so few now.
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we really need to start seriously rethinking how we distribute resources to people.
Trump need to slap them with an import and robot tax.
Or you can just move it to the usa and we will wave the robot tax for a few years.
No, no we don't.
Smart people have been saying that for a while.
The stupid will not be swayed by whatever amount of evidence. After all, they are stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Now we will have robots jumping out of windows:(
love is just extroverted narcissism
citation.
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any time soon. There's stretching that I can't do by myself (think a very elaborate massage will a lot more pulling and yanking, insert happy ending joke around here somewhere).
Now, if _my_ job's automated and I lose my health insurance that's another matter entirely. I'm in a lot less pain since seeing a PT. But it's still a luxury compared too food. And I'm an American. No socialized medicine for me. We just torpedoed that boat with the biggest, orangest clown in history.
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How's your buggy whip factory doing these days?
I've spent my career in automation. The general rule is that automating the first 80% tends to be straightforward and a good return on investment, but that last 20% is harder to get a return on investment. There are only a couple fabled "lights out" factories, and having spent my career in automation, I've yet to actually see any video from inside these places. Mostly I believe they're a myth.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Isn't this one of the companies along with Sprint that Trump is talking to? Betting this setup is part of the billions they are talking about investing in the US as that level of automation has a steep sunk in cost. Especially when you are building entire plants from the ground up.
Go almost directly from cheap, plentiful unskilled labor to automation, skipping that pesky intermediate step where you build a middle class of skilled labor who grow accustomed to a decent standard of living and personal freedom.
"Entire production lines will be automated to decrease the number of robots used during the second phase, Dai noted."
Even robots are being automated out of their jobs!
"Although robotic technology keeps improving, industrial robots will not be able to completely replace workers because humans have the flexibility to quickly switch from one task to another, Dai noted."
At some point, that will no longer hold true. When will that be?
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. They have no obligation to keep mainland Chinese workers employed.
When you can move the robots to low tax, even more friendly govs?
Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam might offer even cheaper workers, better tax conditions, even better trade deals with more nations, cheaper new factory sites, expanded airports, lower energy prices, housing for the few workers still needed.
Once robots can do more, any cheaper nation can offer a special factory zone and fill it with robots and staff.
What China offered was cheap workers and less tax for a decade with export transport to move products globally.
A lot of much cheaper nations can now offer better conditions for robots. Their power supplies are ready. Their tax code is ready to support exports and local jobs. Their ports and airports have been expanded. No unions, no staffing issues.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Remember your computer science! Programming has a long list of HARD problems. The classic Satisfiability Problems are all NP-Complete perhaps you had to use those to build up equivalence proofs to proof others are also NP-Complete?
Here is a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(One does wonder way SAT solver tools are not available for programming... like language/compiler level integration.)
This is just an aspect of programming not the whole process; thankfully for us the fundamentals are HARD problems and the linking of these all these problems together for programming is difficult to even describe formally. Not like that has stopped us, we can't fully grasp the non-linear math that is behind neuron networks of any useful size. So I won't say it is impossible; impossible for us to do yes, but not impossible for us to create systems which can approximate it as well as the average programming. That is still outside my lifetime... or maybe not... I donated my body for science so I might be a brainscan running in a simulator doing programming for years beyond my "death".
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Even without more "tort reform" which is continually attempted all the time, you think a big corporation is going to actually WORRY about being sued? No. Just look at history even when they are punished big they usually pay next to nothing and make more profit knowingly killing people. Tobacco continues just fine and they kill about 11% of their customers. Before you say "customers choose death" think about you choosing a robot doctor over a real one. Enough people will do so to have a period of transition where the success rate beats human doctors (which is not so great - it's up with car accident deaths.) So, as the stats improve more people will switch and corporations as well.
Doctors themselves are funded by insurance companies against their mistakes. The risk is totally manageable probably even at higher rates than doctors.... Also, you don't have to be huge if you can get an insurance company to back you risk. (even in the worst case, you go bankrupt and maybe get 1 year in a federal prison resort-- which is not a pound-me-in-the-ass prison... even so you afford to hire protection.)
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