Chinese factory replaces 90% of humans with robots, production soars

[Recursion]

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/chinese-factory-replaces-90-of-humans-with-robots-production-soars/

The Changying Precision Technology Company factory in Dongguan has automated production lines that use robotic arms to produce parts for cell phones. The factory also has automated machining equipment, autonomous transport trucks, and other automated equipment in the warehouse.

There are still people working at the factory, though. Three workers check and monitor each production line and there are other employees who monitor a computer control system. Previously, there were 650 employees at the factory. With the new robots, there's now only 60. Luo Weiqiang, general manager of the company, told the People's Daily that the number of employees could drop to 20 in the future.

The robots have produced almost three times as many pieces as were produced before. According to the People's Daily, production per person has increased from 8,000 pieces to 21,000 pieces. That's a 162.5% increase.

The increased production rate hasn't come at the cost of quality either. In fact, quality has improved. Before the robots, the product defect rate was 25%, now it is below 5%.

We need to get serious about what a zero-employment future is going to mean.

[Locrian]

1. bootstraps

I'm sure if workers just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and retrain that everything will be fine.

[ananda]

44. Yup

[Dustlawyer]

2. Maybe one of the robots will make CEO someday?

[unblock]

3. seems that's already happened, doesn't it?

[eppur_se_muova]

51. You don't have to be a robot to be soulless.

(Besides, the original meaning of the word "robot" is "worker". Seems kind of inappropriate for the 1%.)

[Orrex]

4. The Times They Are A-Changying.

[GliderGuider]

50. +1

Good one!

[eppur_se_muova]

52. *snarf* nt

[HughBeaumont]

5. Oh good. Recursion's Monthly Doom And Gloom Thread.

I was wondering when this would happen next.

Robots cannot buy products.

People not being able to purchase products affects white collar jobs also. Who do you think purchases the products and services that keep back office corporate headquarters, financial institutions, tech centers, etc. operable?

A purchased Conservative government will never in a thousand years install a Guaranteed Minimum Income (whether it's necessary or not) and you know this as well as I do.

It's going to be a worse-than-Wild-West Libertarian utopia with 6,000,000,000 nomadic starved unfortunates with nothing to lose and absolutely nowhere to turn for help.

But hey, whatevs. You just keep on giggling gleefully at the carnage thinking no one's going to come to cannibalize you.

[Recursion]

6. Nixon proposed one 40 years ago

There's no reason to think it can't happen.

BTW, I've lost four jobs to automation.

[HughBeaumont]

9. Today's Conservatives are George Dubya on steroids.

Different, long gone era.

I want a solution that's going to actually happen.

[thesquanderer]

24. You are right, things have changed a lot in the last 40 years.

By extension, things may change a lot in the next 40, as well.

Maybe the pendulum swings back in that other direction (or things go in some kind of new direction)... but clearly, saying that something is impossible now doesn't mean it will remain so.

[DetlefK]

11. The conservative alternative to a Guaranteed Minimum Income:

So, the company has products it wants to sell, but the consumers are too poor to buy them.

Step 1: The government buys the product at above market-value from the company.

Step 2: The government has now 10 million pairs of socks for $10 a pair.

Step 3: The government sells the socks for $1 a pair, incurring a net-loss of $9 a pair.

Step 4: The government makes up this loss by taxing poor people.



A Guaranteed Minimum Income for the company (not for you, you menial) and the political donors are happy!

[HughBeaumont]

22. I'm kind of guessing that's how Reagan would have done it.

Emphasis on Step 4. He'd never tax the Overlords.

[jeff47]

21. It's cute you think businesses plan that far ahead.

Businesses routinely sabotage their long-term growth for short-term gains.

If businesses thought the way you claim, we wouldn't have to fight for $15. They'd love the additional disposable income to be spent on their products.

[Blus4u]

30. ^^^This^^^

Corporate managers manage quarter by quarter, massaging the stock price because that is how their compensation is meted out, which often are stock options tied to the price of company stock.

Peace

[HughBeaumont]

32. Oh, I'm well aware they don't care that far ahead.

And it's going to be to their businesses detriment . . . which they, of course, couldn't care less about . . . kind of the same way they think about their workers. They got theirs.

[jeff47]

59. So you reply was utterly pointless then? (nt)

[The2ndWheel]

29. What if people buying products isn't needed?

[HughBeaumont]

31. With no GMI, whatcha got?

I'm all ears.

Guaranteed Minimum Income will never see the light of day. Gerrymandering took care of that. There are more than enough Americans who are still fighting the Cold War that would die before accepting that people could get something for nothing. Get that notion out of your heads. No cavalry is coming to save us.

We're expected to just rugged individualize our own futures . . . . lack of patronage, privilege, luck, resources and time be damned, it's expected to JUST HAPPEN and if it doesn't, it's our fault for not trying hard enough and that's that. That's the way America and it's Crapitalism works. I don't like it anymore than anyone else, but I'm not one ounce optimistic that people are going to change for the better. I'm just not.

[The2ndWheel]

37. I think GMI, in some form or fashion, will eventually come

It may be the last option, after many, many, many attempts to find a way to keep people in the loop, but the people in charge won't have a choice at some point. I don't think it will lead to some utopia where everyone is an educated artist, but it'll come.

The future is tough to know. We can all make up stories in our minds, but we won't really know until we get there. Like with everything else, only time will tell.

[Deuce]

7. "zero-employment"??

[Recursion]

8. Why not?

Zero is hyperbole, sure, but much, much lower than now.

[Deuce]

16. I can see the unemployment rate increasing in various manufacturing areas...

But, i don't believe there will be extreme unemployment in this country in the near future.

[Recursion]

17. 150 years ago basically every adult had to work full time

And "adult" meant 13 and older. It's down to about half now. I predict that trend will continue.

[snooper2]

25. 150 years ago most women stayed at home for the "family"...many more fundies also

You should think these statements through a little more

[Recursion]

28. No, that was pretty much an postwar oddity

Both in agrarian and early industrial times basically all the women worked.

[DanTex]

55. In modern times, the women labor participation rate has risen

dramatically over the last century.

If you want to talk about ancient history, most hunter-gather societies worked less and had more leisure than people in modern industrial societies, despite the fact that their productivity was very low.

I don't really see a "zero employment" society coming into form any time in the forseeable future. Several hundred years from now, who knows what the world will look like.

[mac56]

10. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Foolish humans.

[FailureToCommunicate]

12. Factory owners finally realizing robots don't need bathroom breaks, or sleep, or health care,or

lives away from the factory floor (not that many Chinese factory worker have much life in the sleeping dorms they return to after their shifts)

[HughBeaumont]

13. Factory owners aren't realizing you need humans with disposable income to have a business.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, since this is happening multi-nationally now, one cannot use the argument "well, they'll just rely on the two billion people in Asia's collective middle class to buy the products. You don't need Americans". Well, that's kind of bullshit also . . . you DO need Americans to purchase big ticket items alongside your trinkets. Kind of necessary in an economy that's 2/3rds reliant on consumer spending.

[thesquanderer]

26. OTOH, capitalism isn't the only possible economic model. (n/t)

[HughBeaumont]

33. Indeed it's not.

Try telling well-conditioned Joe Sixpack that.

[merrily]

35. Our national economy maybe be 2/3 reliant on consumer spending. However, that is not what drives

multinational corporations. What drives them is; What profits can I derive from the entire world?

[Roy Rolling]

14. China has their own 1% now

Spend $1 million for a robot to replace a $1 an hour worker. Sounds about right.

[marble falls]

15. After the robots take over, who's going to buy all those perfectly made 1000's of smart phones?

[HughBeaumont]

19. Probably the "PhD Plus" holders?

You know, because holding a mere PhD apparently isn't enough to keep a target off your back nowadays. So I'm assuming the people holding the carrot on the stick will invent something new to shoot for in the face of this living wage job dearth.

[Recursion]

20. A PhD is a ticket to poverty now

It will be worse once MOOCs replace in-room instruction.

[jwirr]

53. There is already a lot being taught on the internet. One teacher can teach a lot of students. And

imagine the day when we start using this for all children. There go the PHD and a lot of other jobs. On-line access is just one form of robot that can replace a lot of industries. Movie theaters, cable programing etc.

I clicked in because I have heard this "robots will destroy the jobs" idea for decades - I think the first time was in the early 50s. The answer then was "who is going to make the robots" and I think we know that - China.

[SmittynMo]

18. 50% in 50 years?

I read a few months ago that in 50 years, 50% of all jobs will be gone. What do you think will happen then if this becomes true.

[Skidmore]

27. Perhaps the cultural preoccupation with

zombie movies is a subconscious recognition of the possibilities. What better representation of a huge underclass with no sustenance or hope could you find than masses of starving and diseased beings?

[RKP5637]

34. There will also be biological robots, around the corner. There are going to be massive upheavals IMO

but none really want to address it, at least not publicaly. One of a politician's main platform issues, of course, is how they are going to create more jobs, etc., etc. None want to discuss fewer jobs.

[Skidmore]

39. Would be interesting to have people.present at meetings

to ask such questions. You don't get answers for unasked questions. How do you reconcile the push for policies to increase birth rates with business policies that seek to de facto decrease the number of jobs available either through technology or business models? I would like to hear an answer.

[RKP5637]

40. Given the current track record and an extrapolation, we don't have a sustainable future. Most

politicians IMO still act like they're on the grade school playground. Questions I would like to hear posed too, discussed and answered. These, are the types of things that should also be discussed and at least a path of some type delineated. Or, at least recognized there are major disconnects in the logic.

[Skidmore]

41. They still need to be asked and it needs to become news when they don't

answer. Population matters and so do jobs.

[Lee-Lee]

23. My dad made his career maintaining and servicing textile machinery

And saw this coming.

He practically begged me to go into robotics or a similar field in college saying if you wanted a secure job in the future you better be able to fix or run the machines that will replace people.

I just couldn't see myself doing that. Now, watching the folks doing that work at my current job making 2x what I do it has me seriously considering going back to school.

[KittyWampus]

36. thinking this through- people won't be able to afford what robots manufacture.

People learn to live with less stuff. So standard of living may "decline". I put decline in quotation marks because how much of the stuff we have is ESSENTIAL to life?

So we would begin recycling things much more on a very local level.

People would be forced to move out of cities.

Anyone with any land around their house would have to plant food instead of useless lawns and have a couple of chickens.

People would rely much more on local business.

Large multinationals would eventually take a hit financially as their products go unsold.

I think workers/consumers/citizens have more flexibility than large corporations.

[RKP5637]

42. Large corporations are often very fragile in the big picture. So many have come and

gone over the years.

[Emelina]

38. Your future is going to involve being a cyborg.

1st stage: Genetically designed babies for perfection.

2nd stage: Modify people with machines to enhance productivity.

3rd stage: Become a machine. Well, all you need to be human is the brain. The rest of the body can be synthetic.

[Avalux]

43. I agree that's where we're headed.

Each new generation is being indoctrinated; the apple watch is one step closer to chip implants....eventually we will all be part or wholly machine, and could potentially 'live' indefinitely (except for me, I'll be dead).

[lumberjack_jeff]

45. What's to think about? Zero employment is the end of capitalism.

At the end of the monopoly game, the winner's stuff goes back in the box.

No paid labor = no customers, no household debt and therefore no money.

The way to save capitalism is the FLSA wage should be 32 hours, and 4 weeks of paid leave should be the law.

[GeorgeGist]

46. A zero-employment future means ...

the oligarchs won.

[jwirr]

48. Until there is a real revolution - unlike a political revolution.

[Act_of_Reparation]

49. No, it doesn't.

Without employment, there's no one to buy their products.

The problem is we can't trust these clowns to show that kind of foresight.

[jwirr]

54. And unfortunately they have all the money so they will take longer to feel the results.

[jwirr]

47. Who gets the profits from a factory in China?

[Blue_Tires]

56. Isn't 5% waaayyyyy too high a defect rate for a fully-automated factory?

I mean, the Six Sigma benchmark is famously 3.4 defects per MILLION products produced, right?

And any human-run factory with a 25% defect rate shouldn't even have their doors open...

[Lurker Deluxe]

57. depends on many things

If the part being made is worth twenty cents and the material cost is one cent the object is speed. 5% rejection at 100 parts per minute is not nearly as profitable as 25% rejection at 500 parts per hour.

In base manufacturing if the materials of rejected parts can be recycled speed of production is all that matters.

Such is life in mass production.

[bvar22]

58. On July 23, 2024,

...the system became self aware.