Read more: Click here to read the original version of this story
IT鈥橲 certainly one way to deal with bad publicity. Foxconn, the manufacturer of parts for Apple鈥檚 iPhone and iPad, after a spate of suicides by its workers. Now it plans to replace much of its troublesome human workforce with a million robots.
Foxconn is based in Taiwan but is the largest private-sector employer in mainland China, with more than a million employees. Last year 17 killed themselves, most by jumping from factory buildings. The ensuing and negative headlines worldwide pressured the company into doubling its workers鈥� salaries.
Advertisement
Now founder and chairman Terry Gou he wants to cut rising labour costs and improve efficiency by replacing workers with robots that can perform tasks such as spraying, welding and assembling. He says Foxconn will boost its robotic workforce from 10,000 to 300,000 next year, before reaching 1 million by 2014.
Forget visions of an android army: the machines are unlikely to be anything more impressive than robotic arms. Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) also suggest that Foxconn has set its sights incredibly high compared with the current state of industrial robotics. In 2009, the IFR said that about 1,020,000 industrial robots were at work worldwide, and predicted that the total would be just under 1,120,000 by the end of 2013.