Robot upgrade made in China

The times are progressing, technology is developing, and the ultimate goal of scientific and technological progress is to liberate people. It liberates people from repetitive mechanical manual labor, and even repetitive mechanical intellectual labor, saves people from repetitive mechanical labor in the production line, makes production fully mechanized, makes production costs extremely low, and makes commodity production into Factors that are no longer important in the product life cycle, thus laying a good foundation for the servitization of manufacturing.

The advancement of robot technology has made it possible for Chinese manufacturing to improve production lines and achieve greater automation. Everyone is expecting: robots can bring upgrading potential to Chinese manufacturing, and continue the low-cost competitive advantage of Chinese production after the disappearance of the demographic dividend. Thus accumulating more capital for the long-term prosperity of Made in China.

The inevitable choice

Internationally, the auto industry has an average of 500 robots per 10,000 workers, and some even have thousands of them, basically one robot for every 20 workers. The output value of China's manufacturing industry ranks first in the world, but the number of robots used in the entire manufacturing industry is only one-tenth of the developed countries in the world. Even the automobile industry has only 50 robots per 10,000 workers on average. Historically, the development of the manufacturing industry is often not unrelated to the level of national automation. The benchmark for measuring the level of automation in a country is the density of robots.

For a long time, China's manufacturing base has been lagging behind, and it has been at the bottom of the global value chain for a long time, and is always controlled by others. "If China wants to develop into a world power, high-end manufacturing must also occupy a place." said Xu Fang, president of SIASUN Research Institute, "regardless of external or internal reasons, the development of high-end robot equipment is an inevitable choice." In the 1980s and 1990s In the 1990s, China's manufacturing industry, which had not yet emerged, was weak, and it always had the advantage of low labor costs. Enterprises rarely had the idea of changing production methods. The introduction of robot production is undoubtedly an extravagant hope. Of course, one of the important obstacles stems from the late start of domestic robots.

But this cold situation was quickly broken by the post-WTO frenzy. After 2000, with the arrival of international auto giants, the explosive production and capacity expansion of the entire domestic industry accelerated the demand for robots. Similar to the situation in developed countries, the rapid development of the automobile industry has directly driven the rapid growth of robots, making robots rapidly become an emerging scientific and technological force and promoting the pace of "Made in China" upgrades.

Enterprises are in action

Bai Zhaohua, Vice President of Fuyao Group, analyzes the change in enterprises' awareness of the demand for robots: "The progress of the industry, the enhancement of corporate strength, and the rise in labor costs have forced Chinese manufacturing enterprises to switch to robot production in large numbers. Fuyao Glass is also at this node, and began to introduce robots one after another."

In August 2011, Foxconn announced the "Million Robot Project" to the outside world, and starting from 2012, it will manufacture 300,000 robots at a rate of 1,000 units per day. , used for monotonous and dangerous work to improve the automation level and production efficiency of enterprises. It is estimated that the scale of use of robots will reach 1 million within 3 years. In order to accelerate the "machine strategy", Foxconn has settled the robot project "experimental field" in Jincheng and put it into production.

It is not just Foxconn that is betting on robots for transformation. In fact, it is increasingly common for manufacturing bases represented by the Pearl River Delta to use robots for contract manufacturing. The replacement of labor by robots is already a testament to the progress of productivity. Through this market-oriented innovation, enterprises are promoted to adjust the factors of production, and the technical level of enterprises has been continuously upgraded.

As the main body of robots, the clear prospects of the industry have quietly attracted a large number of companies to file in. The best proof is directly reflected in the sales of robots. In 2011, the Chinese market is known as the explosive year of industrial robot growth. In this year, the sales volume of industrial robots in China reached 22,577 units, an increase of 50.7% compared with 2010. The international robot giant KUKA even achieved a triple-digit growth in robot sales in China, and the sales of the domestic robot rising star, Xinsong Robot, also increased by more than 60%. In the production workshop of Great Wall Motors in Baoding, rows of orange robots are busy. They are responsible for welding, handling and other production processes on the production line. Compared with the intensive manual operation in the past, the large-scale use of robots now brings not only labor cost savings to Great Wall Motors, but also a significant improvement in the skills of workers.

Workers are liberated

"We hope that people will no longer be controlled by machines, but people will control the machines, hand over monotonous and repetitive work to robots, and free employees." Gou announced Foxconn's "robot strategy" last year. When said so. Whether the "robot strategy" can change Foxconn's "sweatshop" image is yet to be judged. But in the long run, this is an effective weapon for Foxconn to ease the pressure on labor costs and balance corporate profits. However, when robots come to work, what do people do? "When there were no robots, we were nothing more than electricians; after we had robots, we moved to automation. Because the degree of automation is very high now, the gold content is much higher than before." An engineer who has worked in the welding workshop for many years said , he is now mainly responsible for the control, maintenance and maintenance of the robot.

Industrial workers in the traditional sense are now transformed into technicians with higher gold content. This is exactly what is urgently needed for industrial upgrading. "As my skills and experience have accumulated, I have gradually grown into a technician. For the workshop, there is definitely an increase in technicians - it's not an increase in people, but an increase in skills," said the welding engineer. Within the organization, isn't this kind of career change and growth of workers more willing to accept? We used to wonder about this. In fact, this is a kind of overthinking - the arrival of robots will not conflict with people's "jobs". Guo Taiming, who has been troubled by "managing millions of employees", also publicly stated that the production and use of robots will allow those "post-90s" employees who do not like boring work to learn to operate and maintain robots and become robot engineers. A recent research report by Shenzhen Robotics Association further affirmed this: Robots replace labor, although some jobs in labor-intensive industries have been lost, but at the same time more technical and service-oriented jobs will be added, which is more beneficial in the long run. Increase labor income and promote social development.

What is more worth looking forward to in the future is how to turn the demographic dividend into a brain dividend. In the words of Qu Daokui, president of Xinsong Robot, "people can do more creative work." In the short term, some positions on all production lines are suitable for robots to do, such as high repetition and high risk. , boring work; and high-precision, flexible work such as electronic accessories, still need manual operation. Bai Zhaohua, vice president of Fuyao Group, said: "The characteristics of China's manufacturing industry do not allow enterprises to realize the so-called 'unmanned production' model in the West." Bai Zhaohua believes that the production model of Chinese manufacturing enterprises in the future should be a combination of "human-machine" mode, that is, the mode of "manual + machine". Perhaps, this is the most pragmatic transformation direction of "Made in China" in the age of robots.

Management will change

In fact, robotic production does not simply replace human labor. What it brings to enterprises is bound to be a big test of management change. The management of people is always the eternal subject of the enterprise. The large-scale application of robots must rely on a large number of technical talents. In today's China, there is a structural talent shortage, which leads companies to seek real "talents".

In the age of robots, there will be a shortage of two types of technical talents: one is industrial workers, not workers without any skills in the traditional concept, but new technical talents. For example, in IT companies, industrial workers are college students. The second is robot developers. The complexity of developing robots often requires higher-end technical talents. The cultivation of high-level technical talents is a long-term challenge anyway. The state should make a difference in the education system, and the cultivation of high-level technical talents by enterprises should be the focus of talent strategy. Of course, the extensive use of robots also brings new technical management issues. "Because the entire system of modern factories is basically computerized, the collection of information does not require human beings at all, but through mechanical automation, you can know the production situation like the back of your hand." Xu Fang said, "With robots, factories are required to implement digital management. The original drawings were printed on paper, but now they are stored in computers, including product demonstrations and product production data, all of which are showing a trend of digitization. Digitalization will bring some development in the software industry. It must rely on the management method of information technology."

Obviously, this will bring a new challenge to the management mode of the enterprise - the management upgrade based on technology is necessary.