Lenovo Announces Grand Opening of US Manufacturing Facility 153
Kohenkatz writes "Chinese PC maker Lenovo had a ceremony [Wednesday] to mark the official grand opening of their new manufacturing facility in Whitsett, North Carolina. The 240,000-square-foot facility, located approximately 10 miles east of Greensboro, NC, was already being used as a Logistics Center, Customer Solutions Center, and National Returns Center, and is now also being used for Production. While actual line operations began in January 2013, the facility is on track to reach full operation by the end of June. The facility is equipped to build several types of Think-branded products, including desktops, tablets, and ultrabooks. Note that due to the extensive use of automation, the factory only adds 115 manufacturing jobs at the facility."
Recovering ground (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably aimed at some of the issues Lenovo's been having with people inferring that, because Lenovo's a Chinese company, that the Think line of computers are now unsuitable for business and government purposes due to the possibility of back doors and spyware build directly into firmware/hardware.
Re:Recovering ground (Score:5, Insightful)
You know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, hell... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're outsourcing to robots really, not to us. It just happens to be convenient for the robots to live in North Carolina in this case, probably due to regulatory issues in some governments/businesses over purchasing Chinese-made computers.
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:3, Insightful)
Without the poor and middle class, you can't have rich people. It's not strictly about money, it's about exclusivity - and money is an easy way to be exclusive. Capitalism in a post-scarcity society is all about maintaining class in a more traditional way, and (almost) nobody gives up what is "theirs" to others - especially those who value exclusivity and are currently at the top of the economic food chain.
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it automate servicing the machines that build the other machines? Those grease fittings, bearings, valves, flow meters, circuit breakers, tool dies, taps, drills, and other things don't service themselves you know...
Not yet. But they will. It used to be that we needed humans to take parts from place to place in a factory, and do stuff to them. Then taking stuff from place to place was automated, the parts not only come down a belt or a chute but they get placed and fixed for the next step as well. The same will happen with the machines as well. A robot will trundle around and replace big compartmentalized components of the machines at first, with the big components sent out for rebuild. Later, the robots will reach into the modules and replace parts like bearings, but they'll do the job much better and faster than any human. Instead of holding a puller in their hand, they'll wear a hand which is a puller/pusher, though they may supply bearings to it with a humanlike hand so that it can easily handle a broad variety of sizes and styles.
Tooling changes are already made by machine. It won't be long before the tooling is also restocked by a machine. We only don't do it now because we have really amazing tooling that lasts for some time, and there's not sufficient cost savings in it. It's cheaper to pay humans to run around and do these jobs because there are not standardized robots capable of doing them. Barring global cataclysm it's only a matter of time :)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I have a better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Toshiba and Sony, quality laptops? Why do you want to kill us with laughter so early in the morning?
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no way to replace capitalism or free markets without using force and the threat of violence to scare every single human being into submission and eliminate those who won't submit.
Then, you're right back to the system of haves(the enforcers) and have-nots(everyone else) that you were trying to replace.