Foxconn hits bumps in road to full automation

Electronics assembler’s love affair with robots goes on despite slowdown in the process of industrial automation due to complex manufacturing operations

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Testing for Foxbot is performed at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. The automatons are capable of performing more than 20 types of manufacturing tasks. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 10:00pm, 29 Jul 2016Updated: 10:23pm, 29 Jul 2016

Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract assembler of electronics, said it is slowing the process of converting manual labour to full automation because humans are cheaper and more flexible to adapt to an ever-shorter life cycle of consumer products.

The company had predicted installing one million robots over a three-year period in its China factories, according to a 2011 forecast by founder and chairman Terry Gou.

Instead, it installed about 40,000 fully operational industrial robots as well as hundreds of thousands of other pieces of automated equipment, and still has one million workers in more than 20 factories across the country putting together Apple’s iPhones, iPads and smart devices for several other Chinese and overseas brands.

“Highly automated manufacturing is still an ideal,” said Dai Chia-peng, the general manager of Foxconn’s automation technology department committee, during an interview last Wednesday with the South China Morning Post. “The reality of manufacturing operations is more complex.”

Dai said the pace of applying robots in Foxconn’s factories had slowed in the past year, following current technical limitations in automation and concerns over cost-effective manufacturing management.