Is Robot Tailoring A Threat To Chinese Manufacturing?

A family in Georgia, USA clothing The technology company is about to launch robot tailoring.

It is said that this technological innovation in the post financial crisis era can completely change the fate of "made in the United States" - its lower cost, thus defeating "made in China". The United States can reverse the embarrassment of importing garments from China and Vietnam every year with a deficit of 100 billion US dollars.

Computer controlled automatic sewing machine can replace manual labor and stitch design. clothes There will be no people on the production line. This represents the main direction of the "re industrialization" of the United States after the financial crisis. Some call it "automation revolution" or "Robot Revolution".

Steve Dickson, the founder of the clothing company, said, "automated machines can restore the production of mobile phones, computers and televisions to the United States".

Commented that robot development has now entered a multifaceted application stage, including in medical operations and manufacturing, "because robots do not need sleep, leave, distraction, and do not ask for a raise. Eventually robots will be cheaper than human labor".

They further predicted that the new industrial revolution promoted by artificial intelligence, robotics and digital manufacturing could enable us businesses to set up shop owners and create various products on the spot. "Robots in the United States will soon be able to compete directly with Chinese workers".

This is not good news for Chinese enterprises that have been plunged into a "low profit trap" which is rising wage costs, rising raw material prices and shrinking export orders. Competition between people can rely on hardships and hard work, less work and more work.

People ask questions: robots will kill. Made in China Do you?

Containment "made in China"

The use of "robot" to defeat "people" is one of the ways of "re industrialization" strategy in the United States.

After the outbreak of the international financial crisis, President Obama and many American entrepreneurs are calling for a return. manufacturing industry "And announced that the global manufacturing industry will be restructured through the development of high-end manufacturing in the next 20 years.

The spanformation from "de industrialization" to "re industrialization" in the United States is by no means a simple return. Made in America But to seize the new commanding heights of competition in technology and industry.

After reflection after the financial crisis, Americans have realized that the long term "outsourcing" policy has led to the hollowing of domestic industries, resulting in many social ills. Yang Jianwen, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, thinks that the developed countries have finally realized that although high technology and finance can make money, the jobs offered are limited and the threshold is high. Therefore, it is difficult for the lower levels of the vast majority of society to benefit from economic development. The widening income gap and the high unemployment rate cause intense social contradictions and turbulence.

For developing countries, the globalization of "outsourcing" has also gradually revealed drawbacks. Long term production of cheap labor has created the "world factory", but the mode of low wage operation has been increasingly unable to go on. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening and the social contradictions are prominent.

The "outsourcing" mode has also intensified the internal contradictions between developed and developing countries, and increasing income has become the common aspiration of all countries. However, constrained by the restriction of manpower cost, it is obvious that the developed countries will not be able to get back to those "low profit link manufacturing industries". They must continue to "March to the high end" and "reverse" the traditional manufacturing industries through disruptive technological innovations.

Yang Jianwen said that the "Reindustrialization" of developed countries is achieved by grabbing the international market. Through the comprehensive application of political, economic, diplomatic, military and trade means, the focus of the combined boxing strategy is to attack the market share, thus driving domestic manufacturers to reproduce and expand the production of renewable products, and then increase the employment rate and reduce social conflicts.

Affected by the European debt crisis, EU member states are also reaching agreement on "re industrialization" under the urgent situation.

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Tagani, vice-chairman of the European Commission, recently said that Europe is facing a serious economic crisis. To turn this crisis into an opportunity, we must reinvigorate European industry, because industry is the main contributor to the real economy.

The European Commission therefore proposed the concept of "new industrial revolution", emphasizing technological innovation, structural reform, changing the energy structure based on hydrocarbons, making more effective and sustainable use of resources, and vigorously promoting new modes of production, including robots, digital technology, advanced materials, recyclable energy and other emerging industries.

"This will create a trend of containment for China's manufacturing spanformation and upgrading." Chi Fulin, executive director of China (Hainan) reform and Development Research Institute, held at the Boao forum for Asia, said that Europe and the United States are re establishing trade barriers through "re industrialization" and recapture the competitive power of international industry through rules such as carbon tax, labor standards and social responsibilities.

He believes that before the developed countries seize the high-end manufacturing industry, and then some emerging countries undertake the spanfer of low and middle manufacturing industries. The "low-cost" comparative advantage of "made in China" has been gradually weakened, and the new competitive advantage has not yet formed.

According to statistics, taking the average wage of manufacturing workers as an example, at present, Vietnam is about 1000 yuan per month, India is about 600 yuan, and the eastern coast of China has reached 2500 yuan to 3000 yuan. Typical case is that China was once the largest global manufacturing base of Nike brand, producing 40% of Nike. shoes But Vietnam now surpasses China to become the largest production base of Nike brand.

Armed with robots, made in China

Sail against the current and retreat without advance.

Foxconn, the largest foundry company in China, has announced that it will launch 1 million industrial robots in 3 years, mainly for cost control. They even invested in the robot industrial park in Jincheng, Shanxi, and simply made their own industrial robots.

Since the "jumping building" incident, the company has raised wages for front-line staff several times and extended factories in inland provinces. Foxconn employs more than 1 million workers in the mainland. According to the plan, the number of industrial robots will be no less than that of workers in the future.

According to the analysis, Foxconn's low-end robot - mechanical arm, each cost more than 100 thousand yuan, this mechanical arm can work continuously for 24 hours, working time is 3 times that of ordinary workers. According to the annual salary of the average worker of Foxconn is about 30 thousand to 40 thousand yuan, the cost of the robot arm is equivalent to the cost of employing 3 ordinary workers for a year, so that the cost can be recovered in a year, and then profits can be created.

According to the insiders, the rising labor wage in China has pushed up the cost of "made in China". If the robot program is implemented successfully, Foxconn will be able to "break through the ceiling of artificial demand" and realize the "globalization strategy". Foxconn has clearly invested $12 billion in Brazil's construction, and has also started its layout in Vietnam and India.

Terry Gou, who has been widely criticized for his harsh management, plans to completely change Foxconn's corporate image with the "robot strategy". He said, "we hope that people will no longer be controlled by machines, but that people will control machines and hand over repetitive tasks to robots, so that employees can be freed."

Indeed, for assembly and processing of Apple smart phones and tablets, intelligent robots can do better than human beings in polishing, polishing, laser marking, welding, spraying and other links. They are also more suitable for Industry in flammable, explosive and other dangerous environments.

This should be the general trend of industrial upgrading. "If China wants to become a manufacturing Kingdom, its success or failure is to turn the demographic dividend into a brain dividend." Terry Gou said publicly that with the use of robots, manpower will be spanferred to higher added value. Those who do not like boring work will be able to learn and manipulate robot software, application and maintenance, and turn them into application engineers and software engineers of robots.

It seems that the speed of using robots to manufacture "made in China" is no slower than that in the US and Europe. Labor costs rose in 2008, and industrial robots began to emerge in the manufacturing sector. In that year, China's sales reached 7500 units, the number of which was 1/3 of the total sales in the first 24 years.

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After that, robot applications expanded rapidly. According to rough statistics of China Federation of machinery industry, in 2010, 23 thousand and 400 imported robots in China grew by 130% over the same period last year, and 38 thousand imported robots in 2011, an increase of 62% over the same period last year.

According to Luo Baihui, Secretary General of the international mould Suppliers Association, the "12th Five-Year" period will be a key turning point for the development of China's industrial robot industry. Market demand also has a blowout development. Demand will increase by 15% to 20% annually.

At present, robots are mainly used in the automobile manufacturing industry. In the future, such as rough manufacturing, stamping, die-casting, forging, mechanical processing, welding, heat treatment, surface coating, loading and unloading, assembly, inspection and warehouse stacking, robots will be widely used as a standard device, and will become the "new force" of China's industrial automation technology and application.

Many international giants of industrial robots, such as KUKA, ABB and FANUC, now regard the Chinese market as a battleground for the future.

Although the number of industrial robots in China's manufacturing industry is only tens of thousands of units, much less than that in Europe and America, but "China's potential is too great," said Dr. Gu Chunyuan, head of ABB robotics business in China. "In a few years, China will surely be the first in the world, and this is the consensus of the industry."

Local robot enterprises are also unwilling to lag behind. The research and development of robots in Shenyang, Xi'an and other places are very fast, and the application market in the Pearl River Delta region is growing most rapidly.

According to statistics, only the robotics Association of Shenzhen has 63 robotics enterprises, and its output value reaches 16 billion yuan in 2011. The average annual growth rate of these enterprises is 50% to 60%. In order to solve the problem of too much investment in the early use of robots, the local government also adopted flexible "hiring" marketing, so that enterprises could "use first and then pay".

In April this year, 36 enterprises, universities, research and investment institutions in Shenzhen jointly established the "robotics production, research and research alliance".

Secretary of the Shenzhen robotics Association, Secretary of the robotics Association, said that the era of "every household has robots and factories and plants will have robots" will soon be coming, and that there are not many backbone enterprises in China's industrial robot enterprises. The HUAWEI robot is expected to appear in the robotics field.

If the machine tool is "the mother machine of industry", the robot is "the machine with long brain". A senior member of the machine tool industry said that the Chinese must understand that "made in China" to compete with the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries can not only use other people's industrial equipment, that will only make China manufacturing lingering in low value-added links. "In order to prevent robots from being killed by their opponents, we must arm ourselves with our own robots".

Transformation to "high-end manufacturing"

If robots replace human beings, where do people go?

Economist Li Caiyuan believes that after the financial crisis, the application of various new technologies and new technologies will definitely eliminate some old jobs and old jobs in the short term, but at the same time, it will bring new employment opportunities.

"According to the multiplier effect of the value chain, a high-end manufacturing position can usually drive more than 3 middle and low posts, for example, around robot production, it will generate vocational training, personnel training, system management and production services." in the long run, the formation of the new industrial chain will not really reduce people's employment space.

For example, before the rise of the Internet and information technology industry, it is hard to imagine that sitting at home can shop or shop on websites like Taobao, and it is hard to imagine that the express logistics industry will undergo tremendous changes.

It can be said that the process of industrialization itself is a process of "machine replacing man". When machines help humans accomplish many low-end, heavy and repetitive boring jobs, human beings will have more time and energy to engage in activities such as learning, innovation, research, communication and art.

In Li Caiyuan's view, the evolution of human from "physical age" to "material age" to the "intellectual age" is irreversible, and this is the trend of escalating civilization.

The most immediate concern is that after 3 years of adjustment, the developed countries of the United States and Europe have cleaned up their financial bubbles and are vigorously developing science and technology and new industries. Once they take the lead in building up the "new industrial chain", "China is afraid to become a low-end wage earner."

The re industrialization of the US and Europe and the application of intelligent robots have already sent out signals. The new round of technological revolution is on the eve of the outbreak.

Jia Genliang, a professor at the school of economics, Renmin University of China, believes that the most obvious change brought about by this technological revolution is that "there is almost no shadow in the field of direct production. It will basically implement digital automatic production, and labor-intensive industries based on processing and manufacturing will become a historical relic."

At this historic moment of spanformation, China's economic rise as a "world factory" is likely to be interrupted if China fails to catch up. The "high wage countries" that occupy high technology and high-end industries will still defeat the "low wage countries" that are backward in technology, just like those used by the British in those days. Spin The machine defeats the handmade fabrics of China and India.

Today, the strategy of "re industrialization" in the US and Europe means to "foster and cultivate their own emerging industries through closed doors". All kinds of market barriers and trade protectionism are inevitable, and high technology in the US and Europe is hard to get. China should have a clear understanding of this.

Li Caiyuan believes that China must firmly follow the path of "endogenous cycle", expand the local market, and strengthen local enterprises, like the United States of America, relying on China's national income multiplier and consumption upgrading to nurture and feed China's own high-end manufacturing industry chain, so that the Chinese economy can circulate upward and grow.

He admits that China's spanformation is very difficult at present. "We have a large population, poor technology, weak currency, big bubbles, many unfavorable factors, but the most dynamic ones," because no one in China is willing to continue to "take 800 million trousers for planes".