One Million Robots to Take Over Jobs of Foxconn Workers
Foxconn aims to use one million robots in three years time as part of an effort to tackle rising labor costs.
Foxconn's employment practices often make the news and the company last week hit the headlines once again. This time, it's the company's intention to use robots to replace some of its staff that has chins wagging. Xinhua News Agency cites Foxconn founder and chairman Terry Gou as saying the company plans to replace a portion of its staff with one million robots to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency. According to Xinhua, Foxconn currently uses 10,000 robots. the electronics giant aims to up this number to 300,000 next year and one million in three years time.
Foxconn currently employs over 900,000 people in its factories. Gou says the robots will be performing simple tasks such as spraying, welding and assembling. These are all tasks currently carried out by human employees.
Reuters cites Gartner analyst C.K. Lu who says thanks to sharply rising employment costs, Foxconn essentially has no choice but to replace workers with robots.
"Rising salary costs should be the key reason why Foxconn is doing this. This year's wage increase has been quite significant and I don't expect the pace to slow down next year," Lu said, adding, "If they don't do this, they will have to move their factories elsewhere."
Further Reading
Xinhua News Agency: Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years
Reuters: Foxconn to rely more on robots; could use 1 million in 3 years
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So..how long before the robots start jumping out the windows?
Robots are pretty dumb, so it might take 2 years for them to jump out instead of 1.
Poor foxconn. Whatever would happen if they'd have to pay workers wages that don't make them want to kill themselves.
Of course the end buyers don't care either way.
Robots making computers...how long until Foxconn changes it's name to Skynet?
Still, considering China practically drops these people into their jobs and expects them to do it for life, what happens to the laid off employees? They'd better install some trampolines because there's going to be a lot of jumping.
Time for Foxconn to find a low wage country for outsourcing!
Welcome to the club :-)
Robots making computers...how long until Foxconn changes it's name to Skynet?Still, considering China practically drops these people into their jobs and expects them to do it for life, what happens to the laid off employees? They'd better install some trampolines because there's going to be a lot of jumping.
Nothing really amazing about it.I remember reading about Apple Computers building a automated robotic factory to produce the Macintosh all the way back in the early 1980's in California.
http://books.google.com/books?id=m [...] ry&f=false
The Chinese are too damn expensive!
Time to move the factories to Ethiopia!
So..how long before the robots start jumping out the windows?
Nice one! But seriously.. they don't deserve to be overworked like this :x
Option #2 was replace executives with robots.
Yeah, Foxconn, why pay decent wages to people so that everyone in the country lives a decent life when you can fire them all and get 1,234,123,213 robots, triple your profit while 1,000,000 people are out of a job and poorer than ever. GOOD JOB, that's how this world will prosper, the rich get even richer and the poor get even poorer.
So..how long before the robots start jumping out the windows?
my thoughts , too , wiat till teh robots become sentiant , then they will start jumping also .. but jokes aside , seriously , LOL this ahs to do with rises wages??? MY A-- more liek foxconn wants awork force that doesn't kil it's self LOL
So American workers -> Chinese workers -> Robots. Seems like a logical transaction.
Moving factories out of China?
Vietnam is cheaper...
The labor in Western China is cheaper
The labor in Africa is cheaper
With the Treasury downgrade, they may be thinking about moving to America for cheap workers.
Even without the total collapse of the US government, if they were able to someday make a totally automated factory, it would be cheaper to build it in the United States where they sell most of their iPhones. They would save in shipping cost.
How much would it cost to make, design, and maintain robots to say with the idea of labor costs?
5k computers(system) plus must be cheaper now then then of course. Guess you can say can't wait till they are "employed" for the idea of what anything would cost for what they are making. Yes?
Might as well get say the latest computer(system) now at an even cheaper price for now, then what later might be, because, the value set of it then for what it is worth might actually only cost that for the same system, with advancements or not. Would incline great care of course, but might meet warranty "deadlines" to say. Decent care maybe, idk. For warranty or the like.
K-zon:
How much would it cost to make, design, and maintain robots to say with the idea of labor costs?
5k computers(system) plus must be cheaper now then then of course. Guess you can say can't wait till they are "employed" for the idea of what anything would cost for what they are making. Yes?
Might as well get say the latest computer(system) now at an even cheaper price for now, then what later might be, because, the value set of it then for what it is worth might actually only cost that for the same system, with advancements or not. Would incline great care of course, but might meet warranty "deadlines" to say. Decent care maybe, idk. For warranty or the like.
Another post, loginning doesnt seem to be working. Tried to send something to the Moderators. Hopefully something went through.
It's funny... I can't remember the source but I seem to recall hearing that even if Apple (Foxconn makes all of the "i" products) moved all of their production to the U.S. and had to paid the workers minimum wage, they'd still be making 50% profit off every unit sold.
I can see how Foxconn would be upset at the 'rising' wages. Paying people 3 even 4 dollars an hour is completely outrageous... The next thing you know, the workers are going to want to work less than 16 hour days.... sheesh...
Foxconn is evil guys. Now that you mentioned "apple" i will tell you one thing. A friend had a mini-mac and had no sound. Not even a sound device was seeing in the OS. So i opened it to see what is going on...the board responsible for the minijacks of the sound card was FOXCONN!! and ofc it was glued with silicon glue really bad way...FOXCONN IS EVIL!! even APPLE is using stuff from foxconn that they suck anyway.
Some years ago my brother didnt ask my opinion and bought a cheap motherboard from...foxconn...it went dead in 5 months...
A motherboard from..asus i think, had a fan on the chipset made from foxconn...it died in 2 months...
I really dont like foxconn, i feel its not to be trusted in their hardware...
This is the naturally evolution for China. They were cheap labor, but as the price goes up, they have the same problems other countries with higher labor have; factories move.
They're still cheaper than U.S. or most of Europe, of course, but are considerably more expensive than places nearby like Philippines. It was inevitable, and it's already happening. As their wages keep going up, companies will leave. It's not like China has a great workforce (they're leapers) or the government is easy to work with. They were cheap labor, and with that gone, so will be a lot of jobs.
Put those jobs in the Philippines, where they'll be happy to have a chance to make some money, instead of a country that is totalitarian, dishonest, and adversarial.
Wait, what? So they gave out those raises which was likely a PR move to counter all the bad press and now they are doing lay-offs because of the raise in cost of the labor? The raise in cost that they put upon themselves?
As the robotic workforce expands the world's unemployment will increase as well. We might end up being luck at 9.1% (granted, this is a terrible #) compared to other countries down the road.
This is what doesn't make sense to me, outsource factories to China for cheap labor, but then replace workers with robots... that could and should be done in the US.
As the robotic workforce expands the world's unemployment will increase as well. We might end up being luck at 9.1% (granted, this is a terrible #) compared to other countries down the road.
The good news is you won't be stuck doing crap mind numbing jobs.
Also the real unemployment level is around 20%, because people whose benefits run out are not counted, but still clearly unemployed.
Plenty of unemployed people here in America who would like a job. They should outsource here.
Anything a robot can do is worth automating. Let humans do things that are worthwhile for humans.
It's too expensive now to pay Asian laborers? What is this world coming too?
The actual rate of suicides at Foxconn is lower than amongst western university students, they just have a massive number of factory employees so the actual number is, and since they're strongly associated with Apple it makes for attention grabbing press.
I mean, I'm sure the conditions there are awful, but that's the case almost everywhere, normal people don't kill themselves over it, even in places like China; and there are far worse places to work, like Nigeria for instance.
Moving labour from humans to automated machinery is an inevitability in almost every industry, even without the rising wage costs China is experiencing.
So..how long before the robots start jumping out the windows?
Robots are pretty dumb, so it might take 2 years for them to jump out instead of 1.
as the robots became smarter , they will start to produce them self , and riot for fight back agains humans !!
Thats why you don't make them self aware.