Foxconn's parent company stands on the cusp

Since 2010, an unexpected employee, "N-Hop," has put the world's largest foundry-Hon Hai Group, the parent of Foxconn, on the cusp. The controversy has never been repeated-although Foxconn's military management and efficiency-promoting business philosophy has been criticized, but some people feel that their overtime pay norms, efficiency and excellence, in the domestic fear few manufacturers can and-internal system contradictions and struggle to promote Foxconn has to speed up the search for transformation road.

Last week, Foxconn announced strategic cooperation with China's largest telecoms data company, Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, revealed at the press conference that he had entered the "birthdays" The road map for Hon Hai's transition has gradually emerged: it will become a manufacturing company and a large data company that implements the Machinetomachine (machine-machine) from the foundry industry. His timetable for Hon Hai's transformation was completed in 2020.

Character observation

The turn of the "Foundry Kingdom"

"And the wending of the century interconnection is the beginning of our transformation, a signal (signal)!" ”

On the April 23, Mr. Gou, who was on a tight schedule, set aside two hours of the night to "platform" the signing ceremony for the Internet for Foxconn and the century. "And the Century Wending (marriage) is the beginning of our transformation, a signal (signal)!" Mr Gou said the two sides were planning a joint venture to build a new generation of data centers to start early cooperation in Tianjin, Shenzhen, Kaohsiung and Guiyang. This March, Fuji Kanggang and Guizhou Province, the new District Management Committee signed the construction of the Foxconn Green Tunnel Data Center, Research and Development Center, the project investment amounted to 220 million yuan.

Mr Gou and Foxconn's zeal for big data and cloud spending has been accompanied by concerns about foundry business. Hon Hai, its main listed company, unveiled its latest earnings report, in 2013, the annual revenue of Hong Hai's $3.95 trillion trillion (about $130.33 billion trillion), up 1.3% per cent, less than 1/10 of the 15% targets set for the year. Too much reliance on certain brands of foundry business, as well as foundry factories and brand profit margin of the sharp contrast, also for Hon Hai buried a time bomb.

Mr Gou hopes the next 10-year revenue will grow by more than one to NT $10 trillion ($ 330 billion trillion) to diversify its business. The development of a new generation of data centers can also be a glimpse of Mr Gou's ambition to change.

"When we design a stencil, we can simultaneously look at a blueprint at the same time on the web, in the cloud, with customers, suppliers, and design and manufacturing units." It will take a week to set a proper tolerance, and now it will be done in 15 minutes. "We have built a platform for the century interconnection, and the future is open, and Hon Hai has accumulated millions of molds and manufacturing processes, putting parallel projects on the cloud and everyone can see the blueprints," he said. Century interconnection of technology and our experience together, can give third-party manufacturing enterprises, logistics enterprises, service enterprises to provide data services. ”

The territory of "combination of reality and reality"

"Many of our factories have already turned off the lights, without the need for personnel, entirely by robots and robots," he said. ”

At the press conference, Mr Gou was interested in showing two PowerPoint slides depicting the future of the Foxconn landscape, but was fiddling with it for 15 minutes while the projector was not projected. "In a year or two, the mobile phone can control the projector, content in the cloud, a key control can be adjusted." Now the situation is the cloud, the net, the end has not been combined. ”

Now everyone uses instant Messaging tools WeChat, WHATSAPP, line for entertainment and social family life, and the value created for GDP is limited, Gou said. But in the future, the cloud combined with a variety of applications, in addition to social families, recreational life, but also in the work, education, security, health, property transactions, environmental protection and transport life and other areas. "Internet large data will be able to manage hundreds of thousands of machines, through the cloud to achieve machine to machine series." The message you receive in the future in WhatsApp and WeChat is not where to eat, but which machine's next screw may be out of danger after three days. ”

In Taiwan, the "Hon Hai Enterprise Patent Cloud Computing Center" to preserve the entire Hon Hai Patent data, "patent cloud" spread in its global production positions, and the century interconnection cooperation, the two sides will achieve patent sharing.

After 20 years, Mr Gou predicts, many monotonous repetitive jobs will be replaced by machinery, "such as going to the supermarket to buy a bottle of water, and soon Foxconn machinery will help you move home." Hon Hai is even working with Tsinghua to study how to receive a bowl of noodles through the internet, he said. Like receiving a book and a movie on the Internet, "we are studying with Tsinghua University, turning the surface of the bubble into particles after the genetic engineering, and then quickly passing through the network to you, which is not impossible after 20 years."

However, more than the network directly receive the bubble surface is more reliable, Foxconn's research on multi-functional robots, Hon Hai Precision to invest in the blessing of technology is involved in the production line automation business, also known as the "Robot" project. "Many of our factories have already turned off the lights, without the need for personnel, entirely by robots and robots," he said. ”

On-line rebuilding of "the workers in the"

"The education of the network relies on the transmission of the cloud, making people study all the Times." Now Foxconn's plant has turned from a factory to an Internet university. ”

For Hon Hai, the "Foundry Empire" has grown as a source of cheap labor and land resources from the mainland, and Mr Gou is already the boss of 1.5 million, as business expands and revenues grow. What makes Mr Gou's mind, however, is that his empire always conjures up negative images of employee suicides, sweatshops, strikes, fights, and part-time factory girls.

"80% to 90% of employees like to work overtime, earn more money in the future can return home to buy a house." "Mr Gou once said at a shareholder meeting to show that the internal management of Foxconn is not as serious as media coverage." But the problem of grassroots staff also let him start to think, for the workers, education is probably more important than money. He revealed that a few days ago, Foxconn has reached strategic cooperation with the Cyber Dragon, so that every employee can accept the education of the network cloud.

"The education of the network relies on the transmission of the cloud, making people study all the Times." Now Foxconn's plant has turned from a factory to an Internet university. ”

Mr Gou regrets that young people are not yearning for repetitive mechanical work, that they can see all kinds of information on their mobile phones, their ability to receive information is first-rate, but the ability to judge information is very poor. "Learning is a lifetime thing, learning is more important, learning is executive power, is the ability to upgrade." Know not to do, always stay in the stage of knowing. ' Learning ' can tell you how to make judgments with experience, so young people should improve their judgment in the process of learning. ”

People dialogue

>> Talk about layoffs

1 million employees are the bottom line.

Q: Will Foxconn do a lot of layoffs because of the increased use of robots?

A: Will there be a lot of layoffs? No. This question I can not be vague, Foxconn entered the mainland in 1988, a step-by-step development, our products accounted for China's total exports 4%, regardless of off-season season, in addition to the annual performance of about 3% of employees, not a large number of layoffs.

Would it be because of the mechanical intelligence to reduce the number of labor? I think 1 million is our lowest value, but we now pay more attention to quality rather than expansion, so we need to educate our employees. We also have a lot of room for improvement, the future of human life style will be a great change, these rely on the knowledge and ability to have the brains of talent.

>> about Apple

Apple's income is not 1/3.

Q: Is Foxconn's income dependent on apple a greater risk?

A: The principle that we are now relying on any major customer for the Hon Hai Group is no more than 1/3 revenue. Our entire group, which last year had a revenue of over 150 billion dollars, has many subsidiaries. We all thought we were just foundry companies, and recently a group of angel investors came to Taipei and they were very confident to work with us after seeing our research center. In fact, in terms of software, content and so on, we have a lot of creative and internal and external entrepreneurship projects, the company's internal promotion of "three create" culture: creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship. Our company this year is absolutely not only hardware, hardware more than mobile phone plate, in the future all the structure will change.

>> Talk about transformation

Planning for the 2020 transition

Q: What stage is the transformation of Hon Hai?

A: the phase of the connection with the century (laughter). Hon Hai is to be transformed in 2020. And the wending of the century interconnection is the beginning of our transformation, signal (logo).

We set up a platform with the century interconnection, we will open this platform in the future. Hon Hai has built up millions of molds and manufacturing processes, and we can tell you what the camera lenses need to use, as plastic boxes, metal frame antenna tolerances and how to design the antenna. We have cooperation with customers all over the world, small to mobile phones, big to cars, the future of every data will stay, the concurrent engineering and related processes on the cloud, we can see the blueprint. Century interconnection technology plus our experience, to third-party manufacturing enterprises, logistics enterprises, service enterprises to provide suitable for business, ubiquitous data services.