Attention Economy


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Technology and Jobs - Even China Can't Escape Robots

Foxconn (aka Hon Hai) is planning to widely introduce robots in its manufacturing facilities.  Even one of the world's largest contract manufacturers, and one of China's biggest employers, finds it necessary to replace workers with robots to stay competitive. As noted previously, technology and productivity improvements are the most important factors behind job market developments.

This piece from The Economist provides a nice summary of Foxconn's plans:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/08/foxconn
According to the article:
"To pacify its increasingly restive workers, Foxconn has repeatedly bumped up their wages, improved facilities, provided counselling and swathed its factories with nets to catch anyone leaping from a window. All this has resulted in higher costs, and signs that the company’s hitherto hugely successful business model has run its course. At a closed retreat in late July, Terry Gou, the chief executive of the company (which is also known as Hon Hai) unveiled a plan to replace a huge amount of human labour with robots by 2013."