In the era when the one-child generation gradually became the backbone of Chinese society, the social problems arising from the management of tens of thousands of people in factories have always caused headaches for the majority of manufacturing factories leaders.

　　Especially with the aging of Chinese society, the climax of manufacturing shortage is coming, labor costs are rising, and poor human management problems will lead to a crisis that cannot be ignored.

　　To this end, the manufacturing industry analysts judge that in the long run, this event will accelerate the pace of robots to replace labor. Considering the cost factor, the inflection point of robots to replace manpower on a large scale may come around 2014.

　　Manpower management problems accelerate "machine generation"

      Zuo Pengfei, a researcher at Taiwan's Tuoba Industrial Research Institute, said that Foxconn's main workers are 20-year-old young workers who are gradually becoming the main employees of the factory. Compared with the previous 80s and 70s, the new generation of employees has stronger citizenship, but less hard-working spirit than that of the fathers’.

　　According to the results of China's population census, the number of people under 10-14 years old in China has decreased by about 5%. At this rate, by 2015, the manufacturing industry will usher in a new climax of insufficient work.

    In the past few years, with the sharp increase orders of Foxconn's major customers, Apple's iPhone, iPad, Foxconn's employment has increased from 800,000 to 1.1 million people. The growing number of workers has brought about an endless stream of manpower management problems. .

　　Foxconn accelerated the promotion of the "Golden Masters Central Plains" program not long ago, and formed the Central Plains Golden Triangle manufacturing base with three cities, Zhengzhou, Luoyang and Jincheng, Shanxi as a base, and the iPhone as the major production, Among which Zhengzhou will become the world's largest OEM assembly base for iPhone products, while the glass panel production base will be deployed in Luoyang, and Jincheng will be the production base for core components. The promotion of this plan has made Foxconn's employment demand in the central region soar, and make foxcoon encounter the challenge of insufficient workers in many provinces and cities where it is stationed.

　　In view of this, Foxconn has started to promote robots on the production line on a large scale since last year. Prior to this, Foxconn Chairman Guo Taiming pointed out that in 2012, 300,000 robots will be manufactured at a speed of 1,000 units per day to replace the monotonous, repetitive and dangerous nature of the production line.

      Many "Foxconn's production lines are dangerous and harmful to the human body." Zuo Pengfei pointed out. For example, the metal structural parts factory in Taiyuan needs to use chemical preparations for cleaning the iPhone's casing model. It is filled with the taste of chemical agents, so it is a general trend to replace them with these robots that are harmful to the human body. Compared with people, robots can work 24 hours a day with no meals, accommodation, and social problems. Foxconn hopes the robots to alleviate the problems it faces.

      "Foxconn's many production lines are dangerous and harmful to the human body." Zuo Pengfei pointed out, for example, the metal structural parts factory in Taiyuan needs to use chemical preparations for cleaning the iPhone's casing model. It is filled with the taste of chemical agents, so it is a general trend to replace them with these robots that are harmful to the human body.

      Compared with people, robots can work 24 hours a day with no meals, accommodation, and unmanageable social problems. Foxconn hopes to it alleviate the problems it faces.

     The plan of 300,000 robots is not going well

     "Foxconn's robot production line is very mysterious and never let we suppliers to look." A Taiwanese company who cooperated with Foxconn in the robot business told reporters that in Shenzhen and Shanxi Jincheng, Foxconn is assembling robots in large area line.

    This person believes that Foxconn's robot products are already quite leading in the industry. At present, Foxconn's main rivals BYD, Shanghai ABB's robot technology level and Foxconn are still quite different gap, compaired with Foxconn's products.

     In addition to Foxconn, other Taiwan-funded electronic foundries are slowly push robots to replace artificial production lines. The above-mentioned Taiwanese companies pointed out that this is because other foundries are currently behind Foxconn in the production technology of robots, and Foxconn's robots are mainly supplied to itself and will not be sold to other foundry opponents. Therefore, in the short term, other electronic foundries will still rely heavily on manual work.

     Foxconn's robots are mainly supplied to themselves and will not be sold to other OEMs. Therefore, in the short term, other electronic foundries will still rely heavily on manual work.

    At present, Foxconn's robots have been used in the production of Apple's iPhone and iPad. "The main reason is in some simple, repetitive and boring processes such as painting, testing and welding."

    Previously, Foxconn's robots developed in Shanxi Jincheng have been off the assembly line, and it is expected to build "the world's largest intelligent robot production base" in 2016.

   "Inflection point in 2014"

    However, It is still technically difficult for robots to completely replace labor. General automation is still based on rough, heavy-duty work such as transportation, grabbing or screening, and automation will have a great advantage in producing large quantities of homogenous products. However, there are more elaborate processes or customized production,  robotic automatic production lines is not economical. In the assembly of fine projects or more complex tests, it still needs to be done manually.

         From the perspective of economic efficiency, the cost of using robots is still higher than that of labor. Zuo Pengfei said that the amortization and maintenance cost of a robot is at least 100,000 a year. Foxconn's robots are not so high-end intelligence, and it is difficult to achieve high efficiency in the short term. In contrast, the strength of Chinese manufacturing workers cannot be underestimated. "In many sections, I saw that the artificial output was calculated in seconds before. "Zuo Pengfei said.

      A vice president of a mobile phone company with a factory in Shanghai told this reporter that in the mobile phone industry, robots are only suitable for companies with large single-product capacity and long shipping cycles, so most mobile phone companies will choose to use artificial Lord, in contrast, Foxconn's big customer Apple's products usually change the main model once a year, and the single product iPhone, iPad shipments are too large, so it is more suitable to take the lead in the robot production line. Industry analysts expect that the advantages of robotic production lines will be reflected in a few years, given the continued rise in Chinese workers' costs.

     According to our reporter, in the Foxconn Taiyuan factory, the initial salary of workers who have just entered the factory is around 1,800 yuan. If you count the over-work payment, you can usually get nearly 3,000 yuan per month, according to the two-shift system, one year. The labor cost of a worker is about 80,000 yuan a month.

    According to Foxconn's parent company, Hon Hai Precision (2317.TW), the company's gross profit margin in 2011 was 7.7%, down from 8.14% in 2010. As the cost of labor continues to rise, the gross profit of the electronics industry has been very low, and it has reached the point where "Every small thing has to be counted".

“As robot technology gradualy become mature, it is expected that the cost of robots will be lower than that labor around 2014.” Zuo Pengfei believes that if Foxconn can get government subsidies for high-end equipment manufacturing, the process may accelerate.