Foxconn: Where is the "million-robot" that says yes?

One side is the restart of large-scale recruitment in Shenzhen, Henan and other fields, while the "Million Robot" plan to complete the time approaching, Foxconn's attitude to make the outside world suspicious: a good robot?

In 2011, Foxconn's boss, Terry Gou, said publicly that Foxconn would manufacture 300,000 of thousands of robots at the speed of Nissan, to be used for monotonous, dangerous jobs that would improve the company's automation and productivity. While setting up a base for the development and production of robots, we hope to assemble 1 million robotic arms in 2014 years and see the first batch of fully automated plants within 5-10 years.

But according to a hardware company that makes robotic arms for Foxconn, the number of robots is probably less than 100,000, the first financial daily said.

In this connection, Hon Hai (Foxconn's parent company in Taiwan) said in an interview yesterday that the company has its own planning, the use of mechanical arm than in previous years to improve a lot.

"It should be said that millions of robots have a big challenge, but the increase in the proportion of internal automation is more optimistic." "These people told reporters that the current human resources are still the important support of Hon Hai in the mainland layout, in the process of promoting automation will also carry out some manpower adjustment, restart large-scale recruitment belong to this column."

Restart Recruitment plan

"Group Shenzhen Factory recruitment of more than one year experience in skilled technical workers, welcome to enthusiastically recommend, please seek job seekers to the Qing Lake, Guanlan recruitment center." "Foxconn's Longhua Worker Joon (a pseudonym) has received similar text messages on its mobile phone almost every day, and in his view, Foxconn's new round of recruitment will begin again."

Prior to that, for Apple foundry new products Foxconn Henan Zhengzhou Plant IDPBG Business Group also carried out a similar large-scale recruitment.

Foxconn Shenzhen Recruitment center staff told reporters that the current recruitment has just begun, between the age of 16 to 35 years old can be applied to Shenzhen Talent Center, the recruitment of objects, including skilled workers and worker, ordinary workers in the basic salary of 1800 yuan. According to Foxconn insiders, only Shenzhen plant this round of recruitment will be more than 90,000 people. "is currently in the low-key. ”

The immediate hiring plan seems to be inconsistent with Mr Gou's idea.

For nearly two years, on different occasions, Mr Gou is emphasizing the importance of automation, in his words, the monotonous duplication of work to the robot, which is China's manufacturing industry to send a signal to the world, China to become a "manufacturing kingdom", the success is to the "demographic dividend" into a "brain dividend."

In practice, Foxconn is also the "slogan" Landing. Over the past few years, the world's largest labor-intensive manufacturing company has focused on pushing robots into production lines and deliberately cutting labor. Earnings showed that in 2008, Foxconn international staff of 108,000 people, reached the highest peak in 2009, to 118,000 people. After two years, the attrition rate gradually increased, with 2011 years reduction of about 14,000 people, and 2012 years reduction of about 28,900 people, a decrease of 29.2%.

The rare "stop-hiring" program earlier this year has pushed Foxconn robots to the climax of replacing workers.

"In fact, the current number of recruitment may be more than 90,000 people, because the new products will be concentrated delivery in the near future, it led to a large increase in the demand for Foxconn's employment." "The relevant people explained to reporters that automation will take time to advance, while the mainland's workforce in many options remains the preferred Foxconn." "Previously we had to set up factories in Southeast Asia, Brazil and other areas is not to transfer production lines, but should be part of the market demand." ”

There are also Foxconn insiders said that recruitment to a certain extent, but also in the factory after the replenishment of the "triage incident" and "salary increase incident" brought about by the loss of personnel.

Robot Project lockout?

At the moment, the robots produced by Foxconn are more accurately said to be "robotic manipulators", with a wisdom equivalent to 3-6-year-old humans, and Foxconn has set a higher goal-and the future will be the equivalent of 18-year-old humans. Mr Gou said, "In the past, we have robots, robot as the Auxiliary, the future of Foxconn, they will be from the ' supporting role ' into the ' protagonist ', may appear in polishing, polishing, laser marking, welding, spraying and other dangerous, mechanical jobs." ”

Over the past two years, progress in the Foxconn Robotics program has also been accelerating.

An engineer at Foxconn's Shenzhen Longhua Park has seen a robot developed by Foxconn in early 2007, and in 2009 his research and development department installed a modular robot. After the million-robot program formally settled in Hung ultra-quasi business group (the business group mainly for production equipment and machinery business group, to provide molds, knives, metal processing and other products, is committed to the design and manufacture of robot production and application of the necessary controller, reducer, servo motors, sensors and other key components, the development and manufacture of various types of robots.

Foxconn local factories outside the recruitment notice also shows that in the past two years it has been in the country to recruit robot application engineers, which has been announced that Foxconn has specifically set up Automation robot Products (AR), located in Shenzhen Baoan District Fuji Kanghong View Science and Technology Park.

"Our cooperation began around 2009, mainly for Foxconn to provide robot-related control board and other core components, in addition to software and robot accessories and other manufacturers are doing." Wang, the head of a company that provides product solutions for Foxconn's robotic arms, told reporters that Foxconn's demand for machines is quite high, and that the company's orders are tens every year.

But according to the order estimates the current level of robotics in tens of thousands of units. "According to the Wang analysis, the number of orders received from the company, although more than in previous years, but the current production of Foxconn is unlikely to complete the previous 300,000 plan, let alone millions of Taiwan." He said that the main application of robotics in the front end of the high-precision patch and back-end assembly, handling links, in the vast majority of intermediate manufacturing links, or must be artificial, if used in precision manufacturing also need to slowly try.

The Foxconn engineer also admits to reporters that the million-robot program is actually very difficult to implement. Before the Lunar New Year Review Conference, Guo always put forward the request for the automation of the production line of each enterprise group, and hoped that the goal of drawing the automatic proportion of production line would be high. "He revealed.

In this respect, Foxconn's stakeholders acknowledge that the million-Taiwan plan is a challenge. The relevant person stressed that the mechanization of the process is to explore the future areas, which will take a certain amount of time. "In particular (production) of some high-precision products, automated debugging will take some time, but Foxconn is also speeding up the process." ”

Numerous challenges

Although not a positive response from Foxconn, it can be seen that Foxconn's progress in advancing robots is not as smooth as Mr Gou had expected.

Industry analyst, while Mr Gou looks to the future to automate the cost pressures of rising pay standards and increasingly competitive product competition, the development and application of robotic cost constraints, process requirements and operational risks in the short term has become a three-year "million-robot" plan.

A director of manufacturing from Foxconn for less than a year told reporters that in Foxconn's main mobile phone foundry business, the main application of robotics in the front end of the high-precision SMD and back-end assembly, handling links, in the vast majority of intermediate manufacturing links, or must use artificial. And from the cost of consideration, according to the model, function, complexity of different, domestic robot per unit price can reach six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand Yuan, low is a hundred thousand of Yuan.

Youhuan, Director of the Comprehensive Development Research Center of Social Sciences in Guangdong Province, the cost of robotics is high for Foxconn. "Foxconn's introduction of 300,000 robots in 2012 will require at least $30 billion in investment, while the 3-year 1 million plan will require at least 100 billion yuan." "This is a huge investment for Foxconn, which has been plagued by Apple's orders and sluggish manufacturing in the near future."

In addition, the robot to completely replace the artificial, currently technically difficult to do.

Liu Yihua, director of Guangdong Provincial Institute of Automation, said that the large-scale use of robotic production, although the upfront investment funds are large, but long-term benefits than artificial cost-effective, and product quality is more secure, can reduce the problem of man-made quality. However, now the robot technology in the fine processing, as well as between machines and the transition between the intermediate link, the implementation of a lack of technology, "Large-scale application of robots, there are a lot of problems to be solved."

"General automation is still to transport, capture or screening, such as rough, heavy work-oriented, automation in a large number of homogeneous product production will have a greater advantage." However, there are more precise processes or customized production areas, the use of robotic automatic production line is not cost-effective. In the fine project assembly or the more complex test, still need to rely on manual. He said further.

"More importantly, the current Fuji Kang more than 1.2 million workers, the mainland staff of more than 1 million, Shenzhen for 400,000, then three years with 1 million robots means the equivalent of 10 million workers, three years at least expand the scale of 10 times times, Whether Foxconn's industry will be able to grow at this rate is a big question mark. "Youhuan told reporters that the extent to which automated equipment can help Foxconn cope with the challenges of the future is a problem, and that the million-robot program should be seen as a better idea before tackling the problem."