60,000 Foxconn Factory Workers Have Been Replaced By Robots

We had heard as far back in 2011 that Foxconn had plans to replace their workers with robots. Now according to reports, the company has recently replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. In a statement made to the BBC, the company says that by introducing robots to the assembly line, it will free up employees’ time to focus on other tasks.

“We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees, and through training, also enable our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control.”

We’ve heard that before as a couple of years ago, Foxconn did say that robots will play a more supportive role, as opposed to outright replacing human workers. Now like we said, Foxconn had plans to introduce robots but in 2014, we heard that it wasn’t going so well and that one of the reasons is that the robots aren’t as precise as they would like. Presumably the more recent introduction of robots are up to scratch.

The company also stated that eventually they expect other companies to follow suit, which wouldn’t be surprising as last we heard, robots could easily take over 5 million jobs by 2020. In the meantime if you’re wondering, here are some jobs that robots could eventually replace humans with.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: foxconn