At 03:52 05/11/2011, Barry wrote:
I'm not sure what to think about this, but it may have a bearing on
the 'jobless recovery' we seem to have experienced....
I'm sure it has every relevance. The difference between "automated
machinery" and "robots" mentioned further down the article seems
pedantic to me. I left industry at a time when parts being
manufactured would physically move from one station to another. Today
in our factories we see many different operations going on
simultaneously on a static part by robot-like machines which dance
around it doing their thing. But, as both varieties are reducing the
number of human workers required, the effect on advanced countries'
job structure is the same -- middling-skill factory labour is no
longer required.
I think automation/robotics is going to have a far bigger effects in
the coming years than just cheaper costs via labour-saving.
Previously, factories and industries in the advanced countries have
moved one by one to, say, China to take advantage of cheaper labour
and then, when wages started catching up again (as they do), moving
again to another country with even cheaper labour costs. However,
automation/robotics is now becoming so versatile with so many
programmable operations that a manufacturer setting up a new factory
in order to make a new product won't need to go abroad to save on
labour costs. Increasingly, factories will not be moving from one
country to another in domino fashion but will start and stop in the
country of origin with very little required by way of labour ab
initio. This is going to stop some undeveloped countries -- perhaps
many of them -- ever getting into the mass production game. It is
going to tend to freeze the situation overall. For example, there are
signs that the Chinese government is having great difficulties in
persuading manufacturers in its prospering coastal provinces to move
their factories to the interior in order to take advantage of cheaper
labour. (China now has dozens of newly-built empty cities in the
interior, superlatively equipped with hospital and schools and so on,
but unable to offer jobs to the rural poor in the region around
them.) Instead, manufacturers are tending to remain where they are,
despite having to pay higher wages from to year, and waiting until
they can bring in great swathes of automation into a factory in one go.
In the advanced countries there's going to be yet another important
effect of the much more versatile robotics that's just around the
corner. Factories will not only need far less labour than before but
they won't need to mass-produce highly-standardized products at
lowest-possible prices as before, particularly if, as has been
happening anyway for the last 20/30 years, the mean wages of most of
the population continues to sink lower and lower. Robotic methods
of production will mean that products can be highly customized and
become profitable with shorter production runs. This can only
increase the gap between a comfortable 25% of the population and the
rest, who are now taking the brunt of the Credit-Crunch effects.
Keith
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/>http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/
Foxconn gears up to build industrial robots - world industrial robot
population to double
By <http://www.gizmag.com/author/mike-hanlon/>Mike Hanlon
23:22 November 3, 2011
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146585/>
Foxconn's parent company, Taiwan-registered Hon Hai Precision I
Foxconn's parent company, Taiwan-registered Hon Hai Precision
Industry Co., is getting into the industrial robot business in a big way
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146585/>Image
Gallery (5 images)
The world's industrial robotics industry will get considerably
larger in the near future as Taiwan-registered Hon Hai Precision
Industry Co (best known as Foxconn) has announced plans to begin
building industrial robots. Its initial plans of building one
million industrial robots for its own purposes will nearly double
the number of industrial robots in the world (currently
<http://www.ifr.org/>The International Federation of Robotics puts
that number at 1,095,000). Foxconn is best known as the largest
exporter in China, the assembler/manufacturer of Apple's iPad and
iPhone and for the extraordinarily high suicide rate of its employees.
*
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146587/>
The estimated worldwide annual supply of industrial robot as co
*
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146588/>
The estimated worldwide annual supply of industrial robots by i
*
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146589/>
The estimated operational stock of multipurpose industrial robo
*
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146590/>
The annual supply of industrial robots (and forecast) as compil
Hon Nai is planning to invest heavily in the robotics area, with
US$223 million for a new Research and Development facility and more
for a robot manufacturing plant. The company is expecting to gross
NT$120 billion (US$4 billion) from robot sales over the next 3-5
years and it has the additional benefit of its own diverse
manufacturing facilities becoming its first and biggest customer.
Industry analyst and the publisher of the
<http://www.therobotreport.com/>Robot Report, Frank Tobe, told
Gizmag that Foxconn's move has massive ramifications for the
robotics industry, which has previously been dominated by Japan and Germany.
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146589/>
[]
"It's a painful wakeup call to ABB, KUKA and Fanuc that their
products are not flexible and easily trainable enough to be useful
to Foxconn or any other new-tech electronics assembler and
sub-components manufacturer even though the electronics business is
a big client of those very same robot manufacturers", said Tobe.
"Things are changing from robots having a small library of moves,
where they precisely and reliably repeat those moves 24/7. New tech
is more personalized and manufacturing is following with small
quantities of thousands of variants of base products. Industrial
robots now need to keep up with those changes, and at present they
have not, hence, Foxconn's intent to build robots that will," said Tobe.
"Some are skeptical that what they are planning isn't really to
build robots but rather automation machinery. My sources are saying
the opposite - Foxconn is planning on entering the robot
manufacturing business with a variety of flexible, easily trainable
and low-cost assembly-line robots."
<http://www.gizmag.com/foxconn-gears-up-to-build-industrial-robots/20389/picture/146588/>
[]
The project is expected to create around 2,000 jobs in Taiwan, and
initial indications from other news sources that the million
industrial robots would replace the jobs of half a million Chinese
workers have now been clarified.
The robots are intended to assist in overcoming Foxconn's
well-documented workforce problems, not by replacing those workers
with robots, but by supplementing those workers.
Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou said that the company intends to maintain
its workforce and train existing workers for more important tasks.
Gou founded Hon Hai in 1974 and now produces consumer electronics
products for the likes of Apple, Acer, Amazon, Intel, Cisco,
Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
Foxconn has had a lot of trouble hiring, training and maintaining a
workforce capable of such massive output and the industrial robots
will enable the company to reduce its hiring frenzy while improving
output and workforce morale.
<http://www.foxconn.com/>Foxconn has 13 factories in China
(including the massive industrial complex referred to as "Foxconn
City" in Shenzen, plus manufacturing facilities in India, Mexico,
Brazil, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic, where it is the
country's second largest exporter.
A letter of intent with the local Taiwanese Government was signed
last week signifying the company's intention to build an intelligent
robotics and automation equipment manufacturing hub in Taiwan under
the name of Hon Hai subsidiary, Foxnum Technology.
The current size of the industrial robotics market puts Foxconn's
investment and intent to build a million industrial robots for its
own use in perspective.
In 2011 around 140,000 industrial robots will be sold globally, an
increase of 18% on 2010, and the largest number ever, after the
global financial uncertainty of 2009 saw just 60,000 units sold, the
lowest number for 15 years. The automotive and electronics
industries were the main drivers of the strong recovery.
In 2010, industrial robot sales were valued by the IFR at US$ 5.7
billion. It should be noted that the figures cited above generally
do not include the cost of software, peripherals and systems
engineering. Including the mentioned costs might result in the
actual robotic systems market value to be about three times as high.
The worldwide market value for robot systems in 2010 is hence
estimated by IFR to be US$17.5 billion.
Interestingly, the massive growth of industrial robots being
deployed over the next few years will undoubtedly put China at the
top of the automation industry.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/11/
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