Foxconn's parent company has just signed a letter stating its intentions to build an intelligent robotics and automation equipment manufacturing hub in Taiwan.
A couple of months back, Foxconn revealed that it had plans to replace a portion of its staff with one million robots in an effort to cut down on rising labor costs. Xinhua News Agency said at the time that Foxconn was already using 10,000 robots. The electronics giant is said to be aiming for 300,000 next year and one million in three years time.
Now it would appear that these plans are inching forward. In late October, the Focus Taiwarn news agency (via Cnet) reported that Terry Gou had signed a letter of intent with Taichung Mayor Jason Hu. This letter outlined Foxconn parent company Hon Hai Precision's plan to build an "intelligent robotics kingdom" at the Central Taiwan Science Park park in the coming years. Focus Taiwan cites Gou as saying the project is expected to generate an estimated NT$120 billion ($4 billion) in production value in the next three to five years and create about 2,000 jobs.
Foxconn currently employs over 900,000 people in its factories. Gou said in August that the robots would be performing simple tasks such as spraying, welding and assembling. These are all tasks currently carried out by human employees.
That would be terrifying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f2ELaWP2BwY/TfLReHfPdKI/AAAAAAAAAKY/gDzrOfQY1Bw/s1600/The%2BSecond%2BRenaissance.jpg
(old news, I read this a few days ago on a normal south african news site..)
Bender?
Oh, so instead of jumping, the robots will throw them over the balconies.
Short term , it doesn't make sense, but in 30 or so years you may actually recoup a saving.
Although if these hi tech robots found out they were making Apple products, they may very well jump off the roof.
Not really entirely true. We employ many robots where i work, not only do you need higher trained people to operate them, you also need a tech trained person that knows how to fix them when they break down.
Id say on average the robots fault out anywhere from 1 to 15 times in a shift. Simple things. And prob have to be worked on once a week or so on average. (usually programming adjustments, always changing)
Alot of it depends on how complex the operation its doing is also. But programming and the items it works with are never perfect, so they always run into things that dont line up correctly for the robot.
Also not to mention, robots dont pick up on defects like a human would. And most robots if something breaks (like a tool) and they dont have anything setup to check the tool. it will keep right on making bad parts till stopped. causing lots of scrap parts.
average robot about the size of a human at our facility costs around $120,000 USD. Then you also have costs for the programming, not sure on its cost but prob very expensive.
So figure a robot will prob pay for itself in 3 to 4 years. Not too bad.
People build robots, install robots, program robots, and repair robots. There will be plenty of jobs for people that are smarter than a robot. But SOME day, robots will be building robots, installing robots, programming robots, and repairing robots. When that day comes, then we can worry.
who gets the raw materials? who builds the robots? how much will they get paid? ah now you see. what's the total cost for building the robot now?
it's not like they're ordering them from newegg, you know.