Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots 530
redletterdave (2493036) writes The largest private employer in all of China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service. Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices. According to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, the company will deploy 10,000 robots to its factories before expanding the rollout any further. He said the robots are currently in their "final testing phase."
Re:That's Less Than $1 per Device (Score:1, Informative)
This is China you're talking about. Chances are it's coal [eia.gov], not oil supplying most of the energy - not saying that's any better.
Re:Why is it cheaper in China? (Score:2, Informative)
A robot can only make 30,000 devices and...? (Score:5, Informative)
"Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices."
So approximately $1.2-$1.5 of the cost of an iPhone will be eaten up by a robot that can only make 30,000 devices before having to be replaced? For some reason, I think Foxconn is probably even better at the financial math than that, and the quote seems so wrong in both a factual error and a grammatical error sense I actually had to RTFA (I hate you, redletterdave) and sure enough the quote is direct from the Businessweek article (I hate you even more, Dave Smith of Businessweek). However, reading 5 other variations of the same announcement, not one of them uses the same phraseology, which makes me wonder where the quote actually came from. Dailytech [dailytech.com], for example, says that Foxconn will have 30,000 Foxbots installed by the end of the year and makes no mention of the speed at which they can build anything (which makes sense, since the robots are so simple- basically pick and place- that no one robot could build an entire device). Another website, Regator [regator.com], gives the same clue, saying they already have 10K Foxbots, and plan to install another 20K by the end of the year.
Re:Misused? Murder is intrinsic in communism. (Score:2, Informative)
I'm finding the expression of support for an ideological system that racked up the murders of nine figures worth of innocent people in the twentieth century both risible and worrying, but on the subject of broken people, Marx was a chronic lifelong alcoholic who fathered a child on the housemaid that he had kept since she was a child, refused to acknowledge paternity, squandered his own fortune and that of his wife, frequently defaulted on his many debts, was an adulterer, an anti semite and by all accounts a fairly nasty self centred piece of work, as his interactions with Engles reveal.
Perhaps that might cast a fresh light on the value of his ruminations.
Re:It's working so well in Venezuela (Score:4, Informative)
Because they can't afford other entertainments.
Nor can they afford contraception (either financially or spiritually).
Re:If everyone loses their jobs... (Score:4, Informative)
The productivity gains from the industrial and information revolutions have not resulted in shorter work weeks for all, but rather a larger unemployed population. It's hard to imagine this will end well.
We would have had a chance if it hadn't been for the systematic dismantling of organized labor starting in the late 70s/early 80s. The canary in the coal mine there, I think, was Reagan firing the air traffic controllers.
GDP per capita in America is amazing and has only been climbing for the last 40 years. However, real median income peaked in 1973 and for the past ten years we've had stagnant or declining wages in non-inflation adjusted dollars. Of course, CEO pay is up like 40x, and corporate profits are at an all time high. The American worker has gotten more and more productive and seen none of the gains. It's all gone to capital. If we actually had a labor movement, there would have been general strikes by now. Higher pay and 30 hour work weeks. The gains in productivity would actually be shared with the worker.
Instead we're just going to get picked off one by one until we wind up with 1% of people fantastically wealthy, 9% keeping the machines running, 80% of people unemployed and starving, and the remaining 10% in riot gear keeping the bottom 80% from revolting.