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.

Comments

Get ready for more glued-in/soldiered on parts

[H3lldr0p]

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.

Re:Get ready for more glued-in/soldiered on parts

[ShanghaiBill]

Interesting that the outsourced "cheap labor" is now on the receiving end of being outsourced to robots.

The labor isn't so cheap anymore. When my company started outsourcing to China in 1998, we could hire assembly line workers for $3/day. Today, it costs ten times that and it takes much longer to staff up. There are still locations with lots of cheap labor, like Vietnam and Bangladesh, but supply chains are weak in Vietnam and non-existent in Bangladesh. You can sew blue jeans there, but assembling electronics is not going to work so well.

Places like Shenzhen and Pudong have the widest and deepest supply chains in the world. If you are running out of 0.5mm screws, you can just send a guy on a bicycle over the screw factory, and he will be back in an hour. If is better to bring the robots to where the parts are than to try to move all the parts to where the labor is.

Re:Get ready for more glued-in/soldiered on parts

[H3lldr0p]

Which I think is Apple's plan.

They've been stating for years that they want to open a factory stateside. If they can eliminate 90% or more of the labor involved in manufacturing their profit margins increase to the point where it makes sense to only use domestic shipping.

It'll be interesting if they can overcome their India labor issues as well.

Re:Get ready for more glued-in/soldiered on parts

[DogDude]

This doesn't mean that at all. Automation can produce just as much customization as non customization. I think you're imagining dumb assembly lines. These are very adaptable, programmable production lines that can create lots of customization. Each and every widget can be customized pretty easily, in fact, with less error than human production.

I wish

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I wish

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time the kids are 40, medical will be all but wiped out by automation. Look at IBM's current work on an elder care oriented robot for example. It is one of thousands of medical automation projects underway. And every time we create a new test that any nurse could give to diagnose something, we move towards the day when no doctor will be needed for diagnostics. No job is safe anymore. Even prostitution is in imminent danger in the two to three decade timeframe.

Re:I wish

[shmlco]

It's estimated that up to 45% of the jobs that people in the US currently do today are up for automation in the next couple of decades. That's 45% of the workforce, and if you're one of the those dislocated you're not going to just be able to switch to another field, because people there have also been dislocated and they're also looking for work.

If you took a list of jobs, ranked by the number of people who do each one, you'll have to go all of the way down to number 33 on the list to find a new job that didn't exist 100 years ago: computer programmer.

Sure, there have been technological advancements and "new" jobs, but most "new" jobs aren't new at all, because by and large the general categories have remained the same: driver, delivery man, manager, secretary, assembly line worker. It's just today that the assembly line worker snaps together circuit boards and screens as opposed to stamping car parts or sewing together buggy whips.

The cabby of today was the carriage driver of yesterday, and, if Uber has it's way, replaced by the self-driving car of tomorrow. In fact, Uber has publicly stated that it's looking to replace all of the cab drivers in NY (51,000) with autonomous vehicles in the next decade.

Major trucking companies are looking to replace their biggest expense (drivers) with autonomous trucks (trials are running... today). There go 3.5 million truck drivers.

And if all of those autonomous vehicles hit their safety numbers, then accidents decline dramatically. That's fewer mechanics and body shop workers, fewer insurance claims adjusters, fewer ambulance and emergency room workers and staff, fewer police needed for speed traps, fewer cooks and truck stop workers, and so on, in every town and city across the US.

Pretty soon you have massive dislocations as entire local industries collapse and -- even worse -- as the industries that depended upon the incomes of those workers collapse, which widens the circle even further. (Can't run a restaurant serving food to people who can't pay for it.)

All told, here in the US we're looking at employment disruptions measured in the tens of millions, and all of them occurring within the next decade.

The Great Depression had an unemployment rate of 25%. What happens when that number hits 45%?

I'd advise that everyone watch the following video, Humans Need Not Apply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm not a Luddite, but I am worried that our civilization is going to go through a few major tectonic upheavals in a relatively short period of time.

Re:I wish

[ShanghaiBill]

Kids - go into Medical.

Terrible advice. The American medical system is bloated and inefficient. It is ripe for automation.There are AI systems nearing approval that can do radiology (X-Ray) analysis better than humans. A nurse with a flowchart can diagnose better than a doctor without one, and a flowchart can be automated. Much medical work is routine and repetitive.

stay out of tech.

More terrible advice. Programming will be the LAST job to be automated, because once that is automated you can use it bootstrap the automation of everything else.

Re: I wish

[shmlco]

Please reread the above comments for comprehension this time. We're on track to having nearly HALF the country out of work in the next couple of decades. And as I pointed out below, it doesn't matter how inexpensive things become if you have no job (and as such no income) with which to buy them.

And given current trends, it's looking as if more and more of the wealth generated by our increased productivity is going to be locked up by the top 1%, with a good chance that the rest of us is going to be living in a Matt Damon/Elysium-style world, begging for scraps and choking on our own pollution.

So tell me, oh wise one, given our current corporate, economic and political structure, do you see all of that wealth and productivity being distributed to those that need it? Or will the rich keep on getting richer while more and more people and regions lose work, lose income, and lose hope?

The benefits of automation and productivity and renewable energy can be used to benefit us all... or a very, very, very few.

Hence my comment regarding tectonic upheavals. Without good planning, things in our country could get very dramatic... and extremely messy, with no guarantees that the future we get is the one best for us all.

May as well build in the USA and Europe.

[comrade1]

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.

Re:May as well build in the USA and Europe.

[SeaFox]

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.

That would make sense if manufacturing in China were simply a labor-payroll-saving decision. As you mention, chip suppliers are in the area, so there are still logistical considerations. But you also forget about differences in government bureaucracy between China and the US/EU. And environmental regulations about the waste being created, regardless of whether its man or machine assembly.

Re:May as well build in the USA and Europe.

[davecb]

One of my customers who has Chineese-made products found that they should build things in the 'States if any of the following was true
- you could build an automated production line for it.
- the device contained a computer-based controller, or
- the device was big or heavy.
That had them building, in that particular case, in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Trump need to slap them with an import and robot t

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Re:Technology getting less-expensive

[shmlco]

Except that truck driving and delivery is being automated. Order picking and fulfillment is being automated. Stocking and inventory is being automated.

And those jobs with it. To those people, it doesn't matter if the phone is $300 or $50. Without a job and the income it provides, both are equally out of reach.

Re:When automation is cheaper than people in China

[gweihir]

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.