Is Robot Tailoring A Threat To Chinese Manufacturing

A family in Georgia clothing Technology company will soon launch "Robot Tailor".

It is said that this technological innovation in the post financial crisis era can completely change the fate of "Made in America" - its cost is lower, so it can defeat "Made in China". The United States can thus reverse the embarrassment of importing clothing from China, Vietnam and other places with an annual deficit of $100 billion.

The automatic sewing machine controlled by the computer can replace manual work and sew the designed sewing machine "one needle and one line" clothes , no one will be seen on the production line. This represents the main direction of "reindustrialization" of the United States after the financial crisis. Some people call it "automation revolution", or "robot revolution".

Steve Dixon, the founder of the clothing company, said that "automated machines can enable the production of mobile phones, computers and televisions to return to the United States".

The comment said that the development of robots has entered a stage of multiple applications, including medical surgery and manufacturing. "Since robots do not need to sleep, take vacations, be distracted, nor ask for a salary increase, robots will eventually be cheaper than human labor costs".

They further predicted that this new industrial revolution, facilitated by artificial intelligence, robots and digital manufacturing, would allow American enterprises to set up shop locally and create various products. "American robots will soon be able to compete directly with Chinese workers.".

This is not good news for Chinese enterprises that have been trapped in the "low profit trap" of rising wage costs, rising raw material prices and shrinking export orders. The competition between people can rely on hard work, less income and more work; But if people compete with machines, these advantages may no longer exist.

Someone raised a question: robots will kill made in China Is it?

Containment of "Made in China"

To defeat "people" with "robots" is one of the ways of the "reindustrialization" strategy of 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 in the next 20 years, the global manufacturing competition pattern will be reconstructed through the development of high-end manufacturing.

The transformation of the United States from "de industrialization" to "re industrialization" is not a simple return“ Made in the USA ”, but to seize the commanding heights of a new round of technological and industrial competition.

After rethinking after the financial crisis, Americans have realized that the long-term "outsourcing" policy has led to hollowing out of domestic industries and many social ills. Yang Jianwen, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, believes that developed countries have finally come to understand that although high-tech and finance can make money, they can provide limited jobs and have a high threshold. Therefore, it is difficult for the middle and lower classes of society to benefit from economic development. The income gap is widening, and the unemployment rate is high, triggering fierce social contradictions and turbulence.

For developing countries, the global division of labor of "outsourcing" has gradually revealed its drawbacks. Although relying on cheap labor for a long time has created a "world factory", the mode of low wage operation is becoming more and more difficult, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and social contradictions are prominent.

At the same time, the "outsourcing" mode has intensified the internal contradictions between developed countries and developing countries, and increasing income has become the common demand of people all over the world. However, restricted by the human cost, it is obviously impossible for developed countries to regain those "low profit manufacturing industries". They must continue to "march towards the high-end" and "grab back" those lost traditional manufacturing industries through disruptive technological innovation.

Yang Jianwen said that the "reindustrialization" of developed countries is achieved by seizing the international market. Through the comprehensive use of political, economic, diplomatic, military and trade means, the focus is to attack the market share, so as to drive the reproduction and expansion of reproduction of domestic manufacturers, and then drive the employment rate to increase, and reduce social conflicts. "

Affected by the European debt crisis, EU member states are also reaching agreement on "reindustrialization" under urgent circumstances.

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European Commission Vice President Tagani said recently that Europe is facing a serious economic crisis. To turn this crisis into an opportunity, it is necessary to revitalize European industry, because industry is the main contributor to the real economy.

The European Commission has thus put forward the concept of "new industrial revolution", emphasizing technological innovation, structural reform, changing the hydrocarbon based energy structure, making more effective and sustainable use of resources, and vigorously promoting new production methods - including emerging industries such as robots, digital technology, advanced materials, and renewable energy.

"This will form a trend of containment for the transformation and upgrading of Made in China." Chi Fulin, executive director of China (Hainan) Reform and Development Research Institute, said at the Boao Forum for Asia held earlier that Europe and the United States are taking advantage of "reindustrialization" to re-establish trade barriers, and through carbon taxes, labor standards, social responsibility and other rules, to regain the dominance of international industrial competition.

He believes that developed countries have seized the high-end manufacturing industry before, and emerging countries have undertaken the transfer of low-end manufacturing industry after. The comparative advantage of low-cost that "Made in China" has long relied on has gradually weakened, but new competitive advantages have not yet formed.

According to statistics, taking the average wage of manufacturing workers as an example, currently Vietnam is about 1000 yuan per month, India is about 600 yuan, and China's eastern coast has reached 2500 to 3000 yuan. A typical case is that China was once the largest global manufacturing base of Nike brand, producing 40% of Nike shoes However, Vietnam has surpassed China to become the largest production base of Nike brand.

Arming Made in China with "Robot"

If you sail against the current, you will retreat if you do not advance.

Foxconn, the largest contract manufacturer in China, has announced that it will use 1 million industrial robots within three years, mainly to control costs. They even invested in a robot industrial park in Jincheng, Shanxi Province, and simply produced industrial robots themselves.

Since the incident of "jumping off a building", the company has raised the wages of front-line employees for many times and expanded its factories in inland provinces. Foxconn employs more than 1 million workers in the mainland, and the number of industrial robots is planned to be no less than workers in the future.

According to analysis, Foxconn currently uses "low-end robots" - mechanical arms, each costing more than 100000 yuan. This kind of mechanical arm can work continuously for 24 hours, and the working time is three times that of ordinary workers. If the annual salary of Foxconn's ordinary workers is about 30000 to 40000 yuan, the cost of the mechanical arm is equivalent to the cost of employing three ordinary workers for one year, so that the cost can be recovered in one year, and then profits can be created.

According to insiders, the rising wages of Chinese labor force have pushed up the cost of "Made in China". If the "Robot Plan" is successfully implemented, Foxconn may be able to "break through the ceiling of labor demand" and achieve "globalization strategy". Foxconn has made it clear that it will invest 12 billion dollars in Brazil to build factories, and has also begun to deploy in Vietnam and India.

Gou Taiming, widely criticized for his strict management, plans to use "robot strategy" to completely change the corporate image of Foxconn. He said, "We hope that people will no longer be controlled by machines, but people will control the machines, and give the monotonous and repetitive work to robots, so that employees can be liberated."

Indeed, for the assembly and processing of Apple smartphones and tablets, intelligent robots can do better than humans in polishing, polishing, laser marking, welding, spraying and other aspects, and they are also more suitable for working 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 lies in turning the demographic dividend into the brain dividend." Gou Taiming publicly said that with the production and use of robots, human resources will be transferred to higher added value, and young employees of the post-80s and post-90s who do not like boring work will learn to control robot software, applications and maintenance, And become an application engineer and software engineer of robots.

It seems that the speed of arming "Made in China" with robots is not slower than that of the US and European countries. In 2008, the labor cost rose, and industrial robots began to emerge in the manufacturing sector. In that year, China's sales reached 7500 sets, which was one third of the total sales in the previous 24 years.

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After that, robot applications expanded rapidly. According to the rough statistics of China Machinery Industry Federation, in 2010, China imported 23400 robots, with a year-on-year growth of 130%; In 2011, 38000 robots were imported, up 62% year on year.

Luo Baihui, secretary-general of the International Association of Mold Suppliers, predicted that the "12th Five Year Plan" period will be a key turning point for the development of China's industrial robot industry, and the market demand will also have a blowout development. The demand will be 15%? 20% growth.

At present, robots are mainly used in the automobile manufacturing industry. In the future, robots will be widely used as a standard equipment in such operations as blank manufacturing (stamping, die-casting, forging, etc.), machining, welding, heat treatment, surface coating, loading and unloading, assembly, testing, and warehouse stacking, and will become the "new force" of China's industrial automation technology and application 。

Many international giants of industrial robots, such as KUKA, ABB, FANUC, etc., now regard the Chinese market as a "battlefield to win the future".

Although there are only tens of thousands of industrial robots in the field of manufacturing in China, much less than those in Europe, America and Japan, "China has too much potential", Dr. Gu Chunyuan, head of ABB's robot business in China, said that in a few years, China will be the world's largest installed capacity, which is the consensus in the industry.

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

According to statistics, there are 63 robot enterprises in Shenzhen Robot Association alone, with an output value of 16 billion yuan in 2011, and the average annual growth rate of these enterprises is 50% to 60%. In order to solve the problem that enterprises invest too much in the early stage of using robots, the local government has also adopted flexible "employment" marketing, so that enterprises can "use before paying", or "fire" robots if they do not do well.

In April this year, 36 enterprises, universities, research and investment institutions in Shenzhen also jointly established the "Robot Industry University Research Investment Alliance".

Bi Yalei, secretary-general of Shenzhen Robotics Association, said that an era of "every family has robots and every factory has robots" will soon come. However, there are not many backbone enterprises with large scale and famous brands in China's industrial robot enterprises, and it is expected that "Huawei" in the robot field will emerge.

If machine tools are "industrial machines", robots are "machine tools with brains". A senior person in the machine tool industry said that Chinese people must understand that if "Made in China" wants to compete with the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries, it cannot only use other people's industrial equipment, which will only make "Made in China" linger in the low value-added link. "In order to prevent being killed by competitors' robots, we must arm ourselves with our own robots".

Transform to "high-end manufacturing"

If robots replace people, where will people go?

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

"According to the multiplier effect of the value chain, a high-end manufacturing job can usually drive more than three middle and low-end jobs. For example, focusing on robot production, there will be a corresponding number of follow-up jobs such as vocational training, talent training, system management and production services." He said that in the long run, the formation of an emerging industrial chain will not really reduce the employment space of people.

For example, before the rise of the Internet and information industry, it was hard to imagine that you could open a shop or shop on a website such as Taobao at home, or that the express logistics industry would change dramatically.

It can be said that the industrialization process itself is a process of "machines replacing people". When machines help human beings complete many low-end, cumbersome, repetitive and tedious jobs, human beings will have more time and energy to engage in learning, innovation, research, communication, art and other activities.

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

At present, the most important thing to pay attention to is that after three years of adjustment, the developed countries in the United States and Europe have basically squeezed out their financial bubbles and are vigorously developing science and technology and emerging industries. Once they take the lead in building the "emerging industry chain", "China may become a low-end migrant worker".

The "reindustrialization" of the United States and Europe and the application of intelligent robots have sent a signal that a new round of scientific and technological revolution is on the eve of a major outbreak.

Jia Genliang, a professor at the School of Economics of Renmin University of China, believes that the most obvious change brought about by the scientific and technological revolution is that "there are almost no people in the direct production field, it will basically implement digital automatic production, and labor-intensive industries based on processing and manufacturing will likely become historical relics."

At this historical moment of great transformation, if China, as the "world factory", cannot catch up, its economic rise process is likely to be interrupted. "High wage countries" that have occupied high-tech and high-end industries will still defeat "low wage countries" that are technologically backward, just like the British used to spin The machine defeats the handmade fabrics of China and India.

Today, the "reindustrialization" strategy of the United States and Europe itself means to "close the door to support and cultivate their own emerging industries". It is inevitable that various types of market barriers and trade protectionism will occur. It is difficult to get high-tech from the United States and Europe. China should have a clear understanding of this.

Li Caiyuan believes that China must firmly follow the path of "endogenous circulation", expand its local market, strengthen its local enterprises, and, like the United States in the past, rely on China's national income doubling and consumption upgrading to cultivate and feed its own high-end manufacturing industry chain, so that China's economy can be circular and thriving.

He acknowledged that China's current transformation is very difficult. "We have a large population, poor technology, weak currency, and a big bubble. There are many adverse factors, but the impetus is also the most sufficient." Because no one in China is willing to continue to "trade 800 million pairs of pants for planes".