Are robots ready for dumpling challenge?
Renowned food company Wufangzhai wants to boost productivity and efficiency by using machines to wrap its famed dumplings, igniting debate about whether technology is making humans redundant.
Hu Jianmin is known as the “chief hereditary craftsman” of wrapping rice dumplings, a skill that was in 2011 listed as a national intangible cultural heritage, alongside the creation of qipao dresses and the construction of Shanghai lane houses.
Hu spent three years mastering the various steps in the process, from how he should butcher a pig to how to best fry red-bean paste to steaming rice. Today, the 55-year-old can wrap three dumplings a minute.
There are 36 steps in the process of making a rice dump ling. The last six steps, which include wrapping the dumpling, polishing the bamboo leaf and tying the bundle together with cotton thread, are considered the most difficult.
Hu and his company hope robotic hands can help out with the tedious task of wrapping, and they hope to increase output by 50 percent.
This spring, the company offered 10 million yuan ($1.45 million) to any institute or individual who can invent a robot that can wrap rice dumplings as nimbly and quickly as human hands.
The company has narrowed the candidates to three applicants (a research institute, a tech company and a professional robot maker) for the final competition. Each now has three months to produce a robot that meets two criteria: Increase productivity by at least 50 percent, and at a cost that can be covered within three years by the profits from new sales.
This year, the company sold 360 million rice dumplings, up by 16 percent. Some 80 percent of the dumplings were sold within the Dragon Boat Festival season, which the company defines as starting from one month before the holiday. Held on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month every year, this important traditional Chinese holiday fell this year on May 30.
Made from sticky rice and a special bamboo leaf that is native to East Asia and has a unique fragrance, rice dumplings vary greatly in taste and size from region to region.
Founded in 1921 as an unassuming neighborhood shop, Wufangzhai is now China’s largest producer of rice dumplings, accounting for half of the dumplings sold across the country. The company believes that it can sell as many dumplings as it can make.
“There are 1.3 billion people in the country. We haven’t been able to feed every Chinese because of our limited capacity,” says He Jianfei, director of Wufangzhai Research Center.
With three manufacturing bases in the country, Wufangzhai employs around 1,000 workers to wrap dumplings. During the peak season every year, which runs from March to June, each worker makes an average of 2,000 to 3,000 dumplings every day.
“The peak in demand lasts only a few months. It is therefore inefficient to employ so many workers all year round only to have them work for just a quarter of the time,” says Hu, who is now the chief technology officer of Wufangzhai.
Over the past decade, Wufangzhai has worked with a Japanese company to develop a system to wash, filter and steam the glutinous rice used in the dumplings. The company also uses a specially created device to count the number of dumplings made per day. Wufangzhai makes an average of 1.3 million dumplings daily.
Many have argued that machines should not be used to replace human beings in the workforce.
But the company says that it does not plan on letting go of its workers, saying that the machines are merely a means to boost production volume instead of reducing labor cost. Wufangzhai also says it is looking to introduce niche dumpling types that can only be made by human hands.
“It is irrational to just stick to the old ways simply for the sake of preserving them. We wouldn’t have enough food or clothes, or even an automobile to travel around, if we were to rely on just our hands,” says Hu.