Foxconn has become known internationally for churning out high-tech products at high speeds. Their factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is among the largest in the Pearl River Delta region, with more than 200,000 workers on the assembly line.
But in 2011, chairman Terry Guo announced plans to make the company's operations even faster, by installing one million robots in its facilities by 2015. The news caused immediate alarm among workers on the factory floor.
"After the chairman announced his plan, we became worried. We have so many coworkers on this product line, if robots replace us, what shall we do?" said Lin Ying, a Foxconn worker.
Foxconn is on the forefront of a full-blown charge by China's manufacturing sector into factory automation. Over the past five years, companies nationwide have ramped up their use of robotics in the fact of shortages of skill workers, high turnover, and rising wages. But Foxconn's shift from man to machine has not been as smooth as it hoped.
"A human worker can adapt to different conditions in assembling; they can solve problems, say if a phone part is slightly different than ordered, but a machine cannot,"said Shi Jinbo, CEO of QKM Technology.
So far Foxconn has not met its goal, only a few hundred thousand robotic workers have been installed. And industry experts warn that companies should be cautious in their automation plans, because there could still be many challenges ahead during the transition period.
"There are many traditional manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta, and the production process is designed for human workers. You need to redesign the entire process. It needs a long time for both manufacturers and robot makers to get prepared," Shi said.
Despite the advantages of robot, some experts said wide range use of automation will not be fully realized for years to come, but the process has sped up with government intervention.
Dongguan is another key manufacturing city in the Pearl River Delta, home to more than 140,000 factories. Since 2014, the local government there has offered companies that it wants to pursue automation 200 million RMB per year.
"Two-hundred million RMB is not enough, but we use it as a collateral with financial institutions, to encourage them to get involved in this plan and make dozens of billions in capital available. After three years, the government will raise more funds for this automation plan," said He Yu, Dongguan city's vice mayor.
Similar projects have been promoted in other cities in Pearl River Delta.
Manufacturing has allowed China to become the world economic powerhouse of the 21st century. But to maintain this position, China must upgrade. Now robots are just one piece of a larger manufacture puzzle in China; the process of replacing manpower with automation still have a long way to go. But some traditional manufacturing cities in China are taking their first step down that path.
