Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer behind gadgets like the iPad and PlayStation 3, plans to replace more workers with robots in the next three years, and increase its robotic headcount to a million by 2014.
[partner id="wireduk"]The robots will be used to perform simple tasks like spraying, welding and assembling. The firm already has around 10,000 robots under its helm, but has plans to increase that total to 300,000 next year, and to a million in three years.
The plan is for the bots to to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency. The new plans were announced by founder and chairman Terry Gou, on 29 June, at a workers' dance party. What a night that must have been.
Based in Taiwan, Foxconn is contracted by almost every technology giant, from Apple to Nintendo, and has become China's largest private employer with its million members of staff.
But it has not done so without considerable criticism. Allegations of employee mistreatment and low wages have coincided with an explosion of suicides in the last few years. 14 workers committed suicide in 2010, and three have already killed themselves in 2011. In July, a 21-year-old Foxconn staffer fell from the firm's sixth floor in the latest apparent suicide.
