Replacement with Robots
The Verge, an IT news outlet, reported on December 30 (local time) that Foxconn plans to automate its factories in China in three phases, with the final aim to achieve fully automated production of iPhones, citing Taiwan’s DigiTimes.
In the first phase, the Taiwanese high-tech manufacturing company aims to set up individual automated workstations for tasks that are dangerous or workers are unwilling to do. The second phase involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to reduce the number of excess robots in use. The third and final phase involves automating entire factories with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing, and inspection processes.
Foxconn said that most of its manufacturing facilities in Chengdu, western China, Shenzhen, southern China and Zhengzhou, northern China have already been brought to the second or third phase. There are also 10 fully automated production lines at the factories in Chengdu, Chongqing and Zhengzhou.
Foxconn has been seeking to automate its factories for several years. Up to date, Foxconn has deployed more than 40,000 Foxbots at factories in China. The Foxbots are industrial robots developed and produced in-house by the Taiwanese company. Foxconn has the ability to produce about 10,000 Foxbots a year. The company said in 2015 that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020.
As of last year, Foxconn employed as many as 1.2 million people. More than 1 million of those workers reside in China. The move of global manufacturing companies, such as Foxconn, to automate their factories is expected to be a great distress to the Chinese government in the future.