The Factory Where Robots Build Robots (bloomberg.com) 59
turkeydance shared Bloomberg's profile of Fanuc, a secretive Japanese company with 40,000-square-foot factories "where robots made other robots in the dark...stopping only when no storage space remains." About 80% of the company's assembly work is automated, and its robots then go on to assemble and paint cars, build motors, and make electrical components. "King of them all is the Robodrill, which plays first violin in one of the great symphonies of modern production: machining the metal casing for Apple Inc.'s iPhones..." With 40% profit margins, the robot vendor has become a $50 billion company controlling most of the world's market for factory automation and industrial robotics, Bloomberg reports:
In fact, Fanuc might just be the single most important manufacturing company in the world right now, because everything Fanuc does is designed to make it part of what every other manufacturing company is doing... The company even profits from its competitors' sales, because more than half of all industrial robots are directed by its numerical-control software. Between the almost 4 million CNC systems and half-million or so industrial robots it has installed around the world, Fanuc has captured about one-quarter of the global market, making it the industry leader over competitors such as Yaskawa Motoman and ABB Robotics in Germany, each of which has about 300,000 industrial robots installed globally. Fanuc's Robodrills now command an 80 percent share of the market for smartphone manufacturing robots.
Fanuc's clients include Amazon and Tesla, but U.S. orders "are dwarfed by those from China -- some 90,000 units, almost a third of the world's total industrial robot orders last year."
Fanuc's clients include Amazon and Tesla, but U.S. orders "are dwarfed by those from China -- some 90,000 units, almost a third of the world's total industrial robot orders last year."
Mind the Gap (Score:3)
U.S. orders are dwarfed by those from China
Sir, we must close the Robot Gap!
It *IS* happening ! (Score:1)
From TFA:
> ... Toward the end of 2015, Fanuc joined a handful of other Japanese companies to invest a combined $20 million in Preferred Networks Inc., an artificial intelligence startup with 60 employees ... ... a chance to apply deep-learning techniques to data culled from Fanuc’s army of manufacturing robots throughout the world so they can improve their own capabilities. When robots make other robots ceaselessly, without human intervention, he said, “data can be collected infinitely”
Re: (Score:2)
Quick, disconnect that place from the internet! (Score:1)
I always wondered where the factories were that Skynet controlled, to make Terminators. Now I know.
How do they know? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fanuc's clients include Amazon and Tesla, but U.S. orders "are dwarfed by those from China -- some 90,000 units, almost a third of the world's total industrial robot orders last year."
When working for a manufacturer, they added a new fully automated line. The tooling was purchased from a local US manufacturer. No one registered the sale with anyone. No one recorded it. We just did it like any other business expense.
Where do these numbers come from? Did Bloomberg simply trust the numbers given to them by the company they were making a glowing review for?
Re: (Score:1)
Either the "local US manufacturer" makes this information available directly (e.g. for potential investors), or their output is estimated based upon available information, or (if no-one bothers to make such an estimate) its output is too small to be worth counting (but someone will have estimated the total output of the "too small to be worth counting" segment).
The Sourcers Apprentice (Score:3)
As I recall, it did not work out that well.
Here in Australia we have just closed our major manufacturing, with the last car produced a few weeks ago. We prefer to dig stuff out of the ground for our sustainable future. We also invest invest in "services", beauticians, lawyers and tax accountants as the way to create wealth in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
So, Australia is going towards having the second biggest manufacturing output in the world, or at least the 4th biggest on a per capita basis? Because that's where the US is. Granted, the percentage of the US's economy that is in manufacturing has gone down over the years, but that is probably to be expected in a mature economy. China has overtaken the number one spot on overall output, but the US is a solid second in output per country an
Re: (Score:2)
The article you linked compares "manufacturing" based on the dollar value produced.
That is obviously a nearly pointless metric.
Re: (Score:2)
What metric would you prefer?
Number of processing steps (bias towards inefficiency)?
Tonnage (bias towards manufacture of tungsten and other heavy metals, bias towards simplistic manufacturing like sheet-metal)?
Hours on a manufacturing line (bias towards long-stage manufacturing and heat/dry cycles, bias towards inefficiency, bias towards total assembly)?
Number of mass-produced items (bias towards resellers and resuppliers rather than whole-car manufacturers, bias towards screws/bolts/small/low-complexity it
Re: (Score:2)
Everything is better than dollars.
A dollar in the US is less worth than a dollar in China, hence in China you produce more for a dollar.
Re: (Score:2)
From an evolutionary point of view, the Ark B people were the fittest.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, and in 'Red Mars' socialism works, along with chanting over plants to make them grow in near vacuum.
It's _fiction_.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
'We the Living' (Rand's best and first work) on the other hand is pure simple history.
Re: (Score:2)
The real problem is: After a generation or two you get people like the parent who think they know something about manufacturing.
Hint: Manufacturing machines have never had shorter lifespans than now. They are enough better that companies go broke running old machines.
Japan and Europe had an advantage not long after WWII because they had no old machines left. But these days companies just constantly upgrade.
Fanuc makes controllers used by many other machine manufacturers. They are known for their outr
100% stealth (Score:5, Informative)
a secretive Japanese company
I'm looking at their YouTube channel, a great way to uncover all the mysteries of that secretive company
https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
They are so secret, you can not even buy shares: https://www.marketwatch.com/in... [marketwatch.com]
Robot consumers (Score:1)
This is pretty cool. I should own shares in the robot that replaces me so I can get paid for its work.
Re: (Score:2)
The utopian version isn't necessarily all that great either. It could end up like communist Russia, or like This Perfect Day [wikipedia.org] by Ira Levin. "Control everyone's lives, and you'll eventually get around to controlling
More and more bureacrats (Score:2)
We have already seen a huge degree, with the automation of the ancient mainframes. Imagine doing all banking etc. entirely by hand. At the time doom and unemployment was predicted. Just like agricultural machines pushed most people off the land, these new electronic computers would push people out of offices.
But bureaucracies just grew and grew. It does not matter how much automation you provide, there will always be more bureaucratic need. So eventually, everyone will just become a bureaucrat.
Until, e
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, they went the opposite direction. They found everyone a job even if it was manually operating an elevator cab (the Epsilons). Only the really bright people got to make the decisions (Alphas), then others got to supervise others to implement those decisions (Betas, Gammas) and do other menial work (Deltas).
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't so much find everyone a job, as design everyone for a job. No more people were made than needed.
perverse (Score:3)
Robots building robots? How perverse !
Re: (Score:1)
Robots building robots? How perverse !
Humans building humans? How perverse ! ; )
Re: (Score:3)
Just wait until their robots start building robot-building robots ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, lord C-3PO hasn't issued any guidance in that regard yet, so I don't know how to feel.
Re: (Score:1)
It's practical, machines need no lights, that's for humans. It's also symbolic, a display that you have achieved complete automation in your manufacturing. It's called "lights out factory", a concept that you can build a factory like a black box, with nothing but in and out warehousing to worry about.
Reality is that truly lights out factories are rare, very rare. Often there is actually tons of manual labor involved that is just hidden deeper down in the supply chain.
Re: (Score:2)
"Lights out" is an old term, been around for ages.
The new world is "Lights On". Old robots were blind and dumb, and did not need light. New robots have cameras and can see, and, to a very limited extent, think. That is the big new thing that is starting to hit the world.
Do you want Skynet? (Score:3)
Because that's how you get Skynet.
Prescience (Score:3, Interesting)
A long time ago this company partnered with General Electric in a mutually beneficial relationship through a so called joint venture company. Some people somewhere had a vision for the future.
Years later this partnership was dissolved and let there be no doubt that the reason had to do with margins. In the 90s and 2000s software was king. FANUC just wasn't pumping out cash as fast as GE's shareholders would have liked. But the (I would call prescient) folks at FANUC just soldiered on and here we were today. Another lost opportunity because fiduciary responsibility often translates to 'make strategic mistakes to satisfy investors'. Sadly, has GE learned? Activist investors have just recently infiltrated the company so I would say no, nothing has been learned.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Both GE and GM have been partners with Fanuc at different times. The GE relationship indeed was a JV, and there are still some products from GE Intelligent Platforms (the controls BU) that carry the "Fanuc" brand name. However, GM was the original relationship, and GM maintains a strong strategic partnership with Fanuc to this day. Fanuc America's HQ is in Rochester Hills, Michigan, a short drive from Warren, Dearborn, and Auburn Hills.
I've never seen a robot in a GM plant that was any color other than Fanu
Eh (Score:2)
Whatever... wake me up when there are factories with robots building robots that builds robots that makes humans.
Or better yet, don't wake me up... it's comfy in VR space.
Turtles (Score:2)
"Dwarfed by China" (Score:2)