China is thinking of a new revolution: a new worker, but it's not about human beings. With wages soaring and an aging population, executives at electronics factories say the day is approaching when 'robot workers' will physically replace people on the floors of Chinese factories.
A new wave of industrial robots is being developed, from sophisticated human-like machines with sight, touch and learning capabilities, to low-cost robots designed to further reduce China's minimum wage.
Over the next five years, these technologies will transform China's industrial sector, executives say, and also address a youth labor shortage as Chinese children become increasingly unwilling to do manual labor. This transformation could also affect the future electronic supply destined to remain in the Asian country.
But some industry executives warn that the move towards automation will likely take years and there will be a lot of challenges to face, including the high price of advanced robots, the risk of continuous technical imitations and also the lack of flexibility that you will have by bringing robots into factories.
“It is clear that automation is the future trend in China, but the big question is how to bring down the cost of such appliances,” Delta company president Yancey Hai said in an interview. “We are convinced that we can do it because we ourselves produce two thirds of the components that we will have to use”.
These robots are more expensive than workers but the cost gap narrows considering Chinese wages are rising by a double-digit percentage every year.
Delta is also testing a jointed robot that can move objects and join components. By 2016, Delta hopes to sell a version for as little as $10.000, which would be less than half the cost of current traditional robots. And the price would be even cheaper than a worker's salary, considering that a machine can work all day long. The company believes it can get a competitive price in its factories in Taiwan.
Indeed, robots have long been technically capable of performing tasks necessary for final assembly, such as placing components on circuit boards, screwing cases together, and cleaning the exterior of devices. But human hands are still significantly cheaper for such jobs. People also don't require reprogramming or switching.
Even Foxconn, a strong believer in automation, continues to rely on factory cities where more than 1,1 million workers do the bulk of assembling iPhones and other devices by hand. Foxconn originally planned to install 1 million robots in its factories by 2014, but executives later said it would take much longer to reach that goal.
Pegatron invested about $100 million last year to automate the manufacturing of electronic device enclosures, which involve harsh chemicals.
Quanta, the world's largest PC maker, expects to make a massive automation shift in the "next two years or so" as labor costs rise. This was stated by the Chief of the Finance Office, Elton Yang.
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