At 7:40 in the morning, the Shenzhen Foxconn Guanlan factory was crowded and the stream was flowing. Feng Ke (pseudonym) hurriedly finished breakfast in the cafeteria and went to the workshop. Everyone knows that Foxconn is the main foundry of Apple. The iPhone 7 Plus is bright black at the end of November. Scale supply is now the busiest time for the factory.
Working hard for a long time is a challenge for everyone. For several years, Feng Ke has been active in the metal processing production line of iPhone mobile phone shells. The torrent of years has taken away the youth and left the life track of being imprinted by the years. On the one hand, he witnessed the turmoil of Foxconn in the "chain jump" and "sweatshop". On the other hand, he also witnessed the golden age of Foxconn's rapid development. He measured the individual smartphones of Apple with his and his annual salary income. The performance, but what really makes him feel a sense of crisis is the increasing number of robots in the workshop. Foxconn is replacing workers with the speed of 10,000 robots per year.
According to foreign media reports, Foxconn has installed 40,000 robots in major production bases in China to reduce the number of employees employed by the company. As a result, the number of employees in Foxconn Kunshan Park has naturally decreased by 60,000 in the past six or seven years.
This figure is far from enough. According to the idea of ​​Foxconn founder Guo Taiming five years ago, 1 million robots will be deployed.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's industrial robot production in 2015 was 32,999 units, an increase of 21.7% year-on-year. From January to August this year, it continued to maintain rapid growth, with output reaching 45,439 units, an increase of 33.1% over the same period of 2015. 11 percentage points higher. Qi Guochun, deputy director of the Equipment Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said recently that the Chinese robot industry has developed rapidly and has become the world's largest industrial robot market for three consecutive years.
iPhone 7 workshop: robots are more than workers
Lifting, turning, laying down... Every day, in the workshop where Feng Ke is located, the robot repeats similar actions day and night. From the first robot in 2012, the number of workers has been reduced from 1,000 to 300. The number of robots has increased from one to more than 180. With the help of robots, the production workshop will complete 16,000 iPhone7 Plus bright black mobile phone case metal processing every day. Most of these semi-finished products will be sent to the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou for assembly, and then shipped from the Xinzheng Comprehensive Bonded Zone port operation area. Sent to the world.
In 2011, Foxconn CEO Guo Taiming announced the “Million Robot Project†and plans to invest 1 million robots into the production line. Foxconn’s self-developed “FOXBOT†robots began mass production in Shanxi Jincheng and officially became a member of Foxconn. Today, five years later, according to data recently announced by Dai Jiapeng, general manager of the Foxconn Automation Technology Development Committee, more than 40,000 robots have been deployed in Foxconn's various production processes.
A720, A728, S600, A700... This is the name of more than 180 "FOXBOT" in Feng Ke's workshop, which are engaged in stacking, loading and unloading, small load handling, etc. For these "robot workers", Feng Ke's mood It's complicated. "Now, robots can only do simple repetitive work, which can free workers from some boring work, but in many cases, such as appearance inspection, machine substitution is not realistic." But looking Feng Ke and his companions realized the crisis when the workers around them came from fewer people and the robots gradually replaced two-thirds of the original workers.
In this workshop, the robot has actually exceeded the number of workers. Although there are still 300 workers, they have to be divided into two shifts a day, with only 150 people per shift, which is more than 30 fewer than the "work" robots in the same period.
Rice Polisher Polishing Machine,Rice Polisher Emery Roller,Rice Polisher,Whitener Rice Mill
HuangShi Stee Metal Material Technology Exploitation Co.,Ltd , https://www.wosenstechnology.com