China Daily Global Edition (USA)
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Manufacturers have said that the replacement of humans with robotics is bound to happen, though the present economic slowdown has made some of them think twice before doing so.
Hefei Meiling Group, a major home appliances manufacturer based in Hefei city, capital of East China’s Anhui province, has since years ago been planning to install more industrial robots in its refrigerator plants located in the Hefei Economic & Technological Development Area (HETDA).
“Though we believe the replacement of human workers will be inevitable in the manufacturing sector, we are contemplating if we should do it now when growth of the home appliances sector has been slowing down in recent years,” said Huang Danian, assistant general manager of Meiling.
“We worry that the investment recovery period might be too long,” said Huang.
In contrast, Giti Tire (Anhui) Co Ltd has already been benefiting from automation. Yu Nenggao, assistant general manager of the company, said that Giti Tire has even been increasing its investments in robots since a year ago.
The company is expected to invest more than 100 million yuan ($14.98 million) this year into further automation upgrades.
He added that the robots have also made it more efficient and safe when transporting the big and heavy tire the annual cost of a robot in China in 2014 products around the plant.
“Every year in July through September, many workers at the production line quit since the temperatures in some areas of the plant can get really high. As a result, we’ve had to constantly employ new workers,” explained Liu Zhiyun, the human resource manager, about the company’s decision to embrace automation.
However, despite the introduction of robots to the manufacturing process, Giti Tire has not axed too many of their workers. Instead, Liu said that employees who have had their jobs taken over by the robots now work in other sectors of the plant.
While the production capacity has been steadily growing, the number of workers at the plant has always been maintained at around 4,000.
“Robotics have also helped a lot in improving the product quality and this means that we can become more competitive in the market which has witnessed overcapacity problems in recent years,” said Yu.
China has since 2013 been the world’s largest industrial robot market. In 2015, sales of robots in China reached 68,459 units, up 18 percent year-on-year, said Song Xiaogang, executive president and general secretary of China Robot Industry Alliance (CRIA).
Latest data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) indicated that China’s robot density has also increased from 11 to 36 in the past five years. Robot density refers to the number of multipurpose industrial robots per 10,000 persons employed in the manufacturing, automotive or general industries, according to IFR.
Andreas Bauer, chairman of the robot suppliers group of IFR, believes that there is great potential for future growth in the industry as China’s robot density is currently about half of the global average.
However, the company with the world’s leading robot density of 569 is actually Shanghai Highly (Group) Co Ltd, a company that manufactures air conditioning compressors.
Over the past nine years, the company has replaced nearly 1,000 workers with 480 robots.
“We discovered that an average of 33 percent of our workers quit during the months of February and March, during our peak production periods, and this has greatly affected our product quality and manufacturing safety,” Zheng Min, deputy general manager of Highly, was quoted as saying by ThePaper, a Shanghai media outlet.
In 2007, Highly introduced their first robot at an annual cost of 73,000 yuan — almost double that of a human worker (37,000 yuan) — at that time.
However, labor costs have been increasing at an annual rate of 10 percent while the costs of robots are dropping 5 percent year-onyear, resulting in the latter becoming cheaper than the former by 2011.
By 2014, the annual cost of a robot was just 56,000 yuan, in contrast to 92,000 yuan for a human worker.
The central government in April unveiled a development plan for the robotics industry, detailing objectives that need to be achieved
Pissarides believes that embracing robotics does not necessarily mean there will be problems with overcapacity.
“Though it is growing, China’s industrial productivity is still very low. The ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy, which emphasizes on automation, will help to increase the productivity substantially,” said Pissarides during a speech in the Hefei-based University of Science and Technology of China in April.
The “Made in China 2025” strategy, which is focused on the manufacturing sector, was unveiled by the State Council in May 2015 and it is the first 10-year action plan designed to upgrade China’s capabilities so that it can become a world manufacturing power by 2025.
Fu Haibin, an official tasked with attracting investments for HETDA, said many of the new manufacturers in the zone already use robots for some of their processes, while the older companies in HETDA are beginning to acknowledge the need for such technology.
“There is no better time to embrace robotics than the present, since the process is inevitable. The earlier they start the campaign, the better development chances they will have in the future,” said Pissarides during the speech in April.
The Harbin Institute of Technology Robots Group (HRG), a leading robotics developer in China, agrees with Pissarides’ sentiment.
The institute announced earlier this month that it will build a large robotics hub in the zone, with total investments in the project possibly amounting to more than 2 billion yuan in five years.
Yang Wei, head of HETDA, estimated that this project would add 10 billion yuan a year to the value of production by Hefei’s manufacturing sector.
The project will include HRG’s eastern China headquarters, a robot manufacturing plant and a research and development center for robotic technologies, said Han Jiecai, vice-president of the institute.
“The industrial robotics business will account for one-third of our Hefei project. We believe that the economic slowdown will actually be an opportunity for HRG, as the country is now seeking new growth drivers,” said Han.