Posted on 08/02/2011 10:17:09 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, known for assembling Apple's iPhones and iPads in China, plans to use more robots, with one report saying the company will use one million of them in the next three years, to cope with rising labour costs.
Foxconn's move highlights an increasing trend toward automation among Chinese companies as labour issues such as high-profile strikes and workers' suicides plague firms in sectors from vehicles to technology.
Contract manufacturers such as Foxconn, which also counts Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia among its clients, are moving parts of their manufacturing to inland Chinese cities or other emerging markets. They are also boosting research and development investments to lift their thin margins. ...
Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou ... plans to use 1 million robots within three years, up from about 10,000 robots in use now and an expected 300,000 next year.
STRIKES, SUICIDES The technology group which makes Apple's iPhones and iPads plan to use more robots Foxconn, which has been plagued by a spate of workers' suicides in its Chinese factories since last year, plans to use the robots for simple assembly line procedures...
‘If they don't do this, they will have to move their factories elsewhere.’
...
Foxconn plans to buy a set-top plant in Mexico from Cisco Systems and is looking into investing more in Brazil, where it is already making mobile phone handsets.
It has bought LCD TV plants from Japan's Sony Corp in Mexico in 2009 and Slovakia in 2010 and is in cooperation talks with a number of top Japanese hi-tech firms, including Sharp, Canon and Hitachi.
Today, Hon Hai Precision's Taiwan shares rose 3.3 per cent, while Foxconn's cellphone maker unit Foxconn International's Hong Kong shares ended up 4.3 per cent.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
There's progress for ya.
(Well, not exactly for 'you')...
Once we train robots to buy and use this stuff we won’t be needed at all.
Prepare for interesting times on the global front.
You guys keep on harping about China’s “demographic time bomb”. Well Chinese companies are planning ahead for it and this is the clearest evidence of that trend.
Meanwhile, the US does not have coherent plan to deal with the upcoming “debt and entitlements” time bomb.
***Robots will be able to do many forms of unskilled labor more cheaply than unskilled uneducated humans will.***
yeah, but can they sing..”No body knows de trouble I feel, no body knows my sorrow” in digital format?
Yep, should be the Dem's campaign song.
Wait - I thought we were supposed to automate to compete with the Chinese.
Come on guys.
Please get my iPhone 5 produced and delivered before you suicide.
“Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, known for assembling Apple’s iPhones and iPads in China, plans to use more robots, with one report saying the company will use one million of them in the next three years, to cope with rising labour costs.”
Will that move be repeated across many industries located in China and will it be supported by the Chicoms?
And, then, with success of these program, where are the Chicoms going to employ the millions of Chinese workers that such projects will replace? Looming additional social unrest in China??
From the expired TJIC.com:
Say that we had first contact with some super (economically) advanced aliens.
…and pretty soon they set up factories here.
…and I was offered a job in one of these factories, doing software engineering.
The pay is $400k/year.
The work week is 20 hours long.
The work environment is far better than I’m used to – great internal decoration, well tended plants, a zen-like water garden near my desk, massages every other day.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” started protesting, because I was being forced to work for less than a quarter of the prevailing wage in Alpha Centauri, and my work hours were twice as long as the legal norms in Alpha Centauri, and I didn’t have every mandatory benefits like “other other year off”, and “free AI musical composition mentoring”.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” wanted to make it illegal for my employer and I to contract with each other at mutually beneficial terms.
…then I would be rip shit that some elitist who had never visited me, or knew of my actual alternatives on the ground presumed to decide that I shouldn’t have this opportunity.
Which brings me to my core point: Chinese factory conditions may not be the exact cup of tea for a San Francisco graphic designer or a Connecticut non-profit ecologist grant writer … but they’re, by definition, better than all the other alternatives available to the Chinese workers (or the factories would find it impossible to staff up).
Butt out, clueless activists.
Now consider how cheezed off the author would be to find out that because of the butting in his dream job was replaced by robots.
Maybe they could save by using labor instead. U can get a lot of savings that way.
I'm not sure precisely who "you guys" are --- quick Google check confirms my memory that I have never used that phrase online ---or what exactly the "time bomb" consists of...
But I do know that demographic problems ensue not only from raw total number of population, but from imbalances including but not limited to:
This massive robotics effort could arguably increase the number who are not only unemployed, but unemployable. Who cannot start families because they cannot support families. Who have been made, to use the redolent British term, redundant.
Fuel for rioting and looting or, if better controlled, war.
But we'll see, won't we?
So.....China has a humongous army. A Humongous imbalance in its male-female ration (particularly among younger men). And shortly, it will have a displaced work force.
What could go wrong?
ration = ration. But, still an appropriate Freudian slip, no?
ration = ratio. But, still an appropriate Freudian slip, no?
Until the robots commit suicide?
Why, yes, sort of not too awful: http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
Why can’t Apple use American robots in American factories? They work just as cheaply as Chinese robots.
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