FOXCONN AND THE MILLION ROBOTS Dr. Day, VP and GM of Foxconns Shenzhen facilities, described in careful detail where robots are needed in their factories, what tasks they need to do, what hurdles there are, and, to some extent, what they are doing in-house. Their most immediate need is in core tasks associated with electronics assembly such as machining, polishing, painting, laser welding, die casting, palletizing and inspections. Automated assembly will come later he said. He described the major difference between an auto company and a consumer product manufacturer: the length of time production lines stay in play; car company lines often last for 7 years while most electronic production lines change yearly or more often. Hence the need for flexibility in deployment, cost efficiency, and ease of programming and re-programming. Dr Day said that Foxconn has grown to 1.2 million workers and the logistics, turnover and ancillary problems and activities involved with that massive workforce had prompted Foxconns Chairman Terry Gou to say that Foxconn would deploy 1 million robots to help reduce and control the numbers, manage the problems better while increasing quality, and eliminate the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks that contributed to labor problems in the past. He suggested that the media was more interested in the few instances of labor troubles than in the amazing technologies, capabilities and components the company provided and offered; that the media often incorrectly reported non-stories. For example, the flurry of stories about Google and Foxconn having an agreement to cooperate was unknown to him. He read more about it in the press than he heard about it from within Foxconn. When queried about the fact that Foxconn has a line of robots that it manufactures, he explained that Foxbots were for internal use only and for material handling, for tool and die making, and for integrating from more costly purchased systems. They decided to make Foxbots solely for economic reasons. He also said that right now Foxconn utilized about 50,000 traditional robots, had an additional 50,000 automation devices that might be called robots, and about 500,000 not-robotic but intelligent automation devices mostly of its own creation. Surprisingly forthright comments from a very interesting proponent of automated manufacturing, said moderator Ken Fouhy.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 21:11:23 +0000
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