笨狼發牢騷
發發牢騷，解解悶，消消愁
正文
幾個月前了解了一下機器人，正好見到古狗旗下的波士頓動力展示了新一代人形機器人巨人：
當時隻覺得不服不行。然而不久就聽說古狗要將波動賣了，覺得有點意外，但沒深究。周末小道說豐田科研要買，合約沒最後定，但所有細節都已定：
此報道言及古狗忍疼割愛的背景：裴矩（Larry Page）和高層班子跟波動部門不但不合，簡直要鬧翻了。追蹤了一下彭博原來的報道：
《彭博》Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat
《鈦媒體》造出逆天機器人Atlas的波士頓動力，穀歌準備把它賣掉了
《彭博》Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat
《鈦媒體》造出逆天機器人Atlas的波士頓動力，穀歌準備把它賣掉了
原先覺得意外，因為裴矩是科學科班l出身，對領前技術最關注，常常壓下巨款。波動屬於燒錢的玩意兒，但技術很先進，不過機器人好的不好做，你見到的技術最尖端的大多屬於自動化那種，實際上比古典力學大概高一個檔次，有人工智能，但基本線性，科幻電影裏的，都是模擬的。采用新的人工智能加上最新機器模擬骨骼結構，實際上很難做，機器模擬，實際上是三維空間+三維空間，看似靈活，目前還是機器思維。
美國最出色的大學'機器人競賽，美國國家航空航天局（NASA）主持。難
機器人用上仿生學（Bionics），更難，最先進的是人工手腳，已經很神了。
這一切，都是美國在做。
像如此領先而且有占據行業陣地的技術，裴矩是不會放棄的。裴矩是烘烘，看來世界上烘烘還有其他人；裴矩厲害，有能力有資格有本錢，其他人也厲害，有不服的。
《技術內幕》Boston Dynamics employees were frustrated with Google's plan for a household robot
唉，俗話說一山不容二虎。裴矩既要領先，又要錢，也不好當家。
唉，俗話說一山不容二虎。裴矩既要領先，又要錢，也不好當家。
《彭博虻報》Google's Chaos Theory
原來古狗內部也是亂成一團，亂花錢，不過自己錢多，別人更差勁，也沒事兒。
盡管難，沒技術，就得自己研發，中國眼巴巴望著先進技術也百多年了，不是不想，近兩年來李克強大肆宣傳的“轉型、升級、工業4.0”，也說得很響，熱情投入也不差，然而實情卻沒多大進展，這是我幾個月前觀察的結果（中國機器人現狀):
基本明確指出實際上中國機器人擁有知識產權微不足道，“去年國內109億元的機器人市場中，國外機器人的份額高達85%，產值達到92.5億元;國產機器人的份額僅為15%，產值約為16.4億元，盡管這已比2014年11%的份額高”，“四大機器人跨國巨頭都在加快推進中國本土化。2015年國內工業機器人本體需求規模首次突破百億，以四大巨頭為代表的外資企業占據了85%的份額”，“中國機器人尚處於玩概念階段，競爭力產品還太少”，連政府的目標都隻是到2020占據50%的市場
國內能靜下心來踏踏實實做的，不多，深入人心的是山寨精神，浮躁、投機心太重。隻是如資中筠所說，有些東西靠花錢是買不回來的。
美國人所說的“創業精神”（entrepreneurial spirit），中國現在也很盛了。資中筠卻點明了美國為什麽強大，都是“軟”實力，自身強，實力就體現出來了。要做到這地步，我想提的兩個方麵是：產權保護和嚴厲執法，思想自由。
知識產權的關鍵，現在國內已經有足夠的認識，山寨不是占了外國人的便宜，而是坑了自己，沒人願意做難得，長期投資的發明。目前不但立法不齊全，執法更性如兒戲，層層幹預，在此環境下，大家說“創業”，在技術上有領先、跳躍性的發明不多，跟政策吃飯為主。
思想自由比較複雜。有言論自由，媒體自由，我想說“思想自由”。思想自由是中國環境下無可奈何的選擇。言論自由、媒體自由在中國都是禁區，大家說閑話，行，但有界線。既然言論自由、媒體自由難，那麽至少允許學術界的思想自由。可是中國知識分子曆來是政府官僚的一個主要參與者，是利益的得益者之一，往往與統治高層達成共識，以社稷為代價。對於獨立、係統之外的思想，政府壓製是常規。這一來，這個社會思維單一，不思進取，日趨保守，結果。
龍科多：中國科學素質基準，和美國的有什麽不同
作為一份高規格文件，近日出台的《中國公民科學素質基準》卻出現了“力是自然界萬物運動的原因”等低級錯誤，以及要求公民“知陰陽五行”等諸多值得商榷的提法。有媒體指出，作為“十年磨一劍”的產物，對比研究稿、征求意見稿，可以發現《基準》是越搞越不靠譜。
媒體稱《基準》編排很奇怪的根本原因，在於製定者一定要跟著2006年國務院文件《科學素質綱要》走。複旦大學物理學係的施鬱則撰文推測，之所以發生一係列失誤進入《基準》這樣的係統性問題，可能是因為有關部門有一個誤會，以為“自然辯證法”等相關專業就是指導科學普及的對口專業。施鬱稱，他本人不認同“哲學可以指導科學”的說法。
難道覺得奇怪嗎？
“思想自由”，是在默認言論自由，媒體自由是個難題的前提下允許學術界擁有“思想自由”，能暢所欲言。如果知識分子不能說真話，研究有禁區，研究的結果要符合“馬列毛”“鄧江習”思維，那知識分子就不再是知識分子，而隻是禦用喉舌，不能思考，任何創新的機會都會被扼殺。說來也怪，我說沒這“思想自由”，科學革命、科學創新的努力也是徒然，不是說毫無結果，但不可能領先世界。沒有學術界的“思想自由”會導致整個社會在所有領域僵化、萎縮，大家隻會跟風、馬屁，向錢看，現在學術界的虛假腐敗不但無法杜絕，還會惡化。
中國統治階層曆來采取對整個社會控製得方式，現在的藉口是“社會穩定”，”和諧“，仔細看來，除了維護統治階層的權利利益，沒有其它的解釋說的過去。
中國文明幾千年，難道整個民族的智慧不足與引到社會往正確的方向發展嗎？
領先好幾十年的技術
連貴州也不落後，要“造一個”出來
貴陽要建“中國數穀” 外國科技巨頭也想分一杯羹，李克強打氣
這也有點兒虛了：
在《新華社》英文版，李克強下午單獨作報告提到“自由”（Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has promised more freedom and financial support），然而中文版用詞不同，不知道是翻譯沒翻好，還是有意。
不過基礎進展不大，使用中國曆來不差。近日《金融時報》以中國機器人的興起對全球製造業做了個觀察（見下），《觀察者網》給了個翻譯：
《觀察者網》本·布蘭德：中國掀起全球機器人革命
這裏說的“革命”，是生產手段的革命，盡管中國不擁有機器人的知識產權，但並不限製中國對整個製造過程進行改革、甚至“革命”，來大幅提高生產效率。效率高，競爭力就大，中國有希望將製造業成本日益增高，質量相對下跌而導致的製造業外流局勢扭轉。這也很關鍵。
這看上去是潮流，但大家現在為什麽都急著做？
人民日報記者調查用工成本：員工掙7300元，企業要掏1.6萬
“不漲工資，招不來人；工資漲上去，企業吃不消”
用工成本壓力不小，但企業都表示不敢不漲工資。“焊接工種技術要求高、工作強度大，年輕人大多不願意幹，再不漲工資，更是招不著人”“就是年年漲工資，核心員工離職的情況還是很多”
一名月薪1萬元的員工，扣除個人繳納的社保及個稅等，拿到手的部分是7300元，企業總計為其支付約1.6萬元
“機器換人”漸成潮流。企業普遍認為工資已不可能降，關鍵要提高勞動生產率
目前中國製造成本不斷上升，總的因素較複雜，但人工成本是個首當其衝的原因。中國真是怪，人口過多，但製造業基建（樓房交通等）人口卻日趨短缺（創業的人口，那是火），是人口老化的惡性結果（大眾卻未因此大幅提高生活質量，經濟學家悲歎為“未富先老”，也許是發展得太快了），結果中國製造業麵臨兩個方麵的挑戰：低成本，如越南、南亞、東南亞，非洲，都與中國競爭；高效能、高質量，如美國，自動化程度突飛猛進，質量越來越高，能源費用日益下降。兩者都造成中國競爭力下降，難以競爭，光靠人民幣貶值是救不了的。所以這機器人生產方式的大幅采用，會對中國重新占據製造業有關鍵的作用。
神乎其神的深圳怡豐機器人的國內自動泊車機器人，技術很好，但未必是吹噓的“全球首創“。《觀察者網》轉載《雷鋒網》報道
目前中國這種產業更新是件好事，有必要，會有幫助。但除了“引進先進技術”，還得自己擁有先進技術，才能真正領導世界製造業，而最關鍵的，是建立思想、研究的大環境，這與習近平僵固思想xia相衝突。這是中國的另一個挑戰，不知習近平在歎息為何中國外交無人才之際是否意識到他自己是導致此種局麵的促進者。
《金融時報》Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
China’s robot revolution
Across China, factories are replacing humans with robots in a new automation-driven industrial revolution. And the effects will be felt around the world
APRIL 28, 2016 Ben Bland
The technical staff repair the robot in YingAo Kitchen Utensils Co., Ltd.
The Ying Ao sink foundry in southern China’s Guangdong province does not look like a factory of the future. The sign over the entrance is faded; inside, the floor is greasy with patches of mud, and a thick metal dust — the by-product of the stainless-steel polishing process — clogs the air. As workers haul trolleys across the factory floor, the cavernous, shed-like building reverberates with a loud clanging.
Guangdong is the growth engine of China’s manufacturing industry, generating $615bn in exports last year — more than a quarter of the country’s total. In this part of the province, the standard wage for workers is about Rmb4,000 ($600) per month. Ying Ao, which manufactures sinks destined for the kitchens of Europe and the US, has to pay double that, according to deputy manager Chen Conghan, because conditions in the factory are so unpleasant. So, four years ago, the company started buying machines to replace the ever more costly humans.
Nine robots now do the job of 140 full-time workers. Robotic arms pick up sinks from a pile, buff them until they gleam and then deposit them on a self-driving trolley that takes them to a computer-linked camera for a final quality check.
The company, which exports 1,500 sinks a day, spent more than $3m on the robots. “These machines are cheaper, more precise and more reliable than people,” says Chen. “I’ve never had a whole batch ruined by robots. I look forward to replacing more humans in future,” he adds, with a wry smile.
Across the manufacturing belt that hugs China’s southern coastline, thousands of factories like Chen’s are turning to automation in a government-backed, robot-driven industrial revolution the likes of which the world has never seen. Since 2013, China has bought more industrial robots each year than any other country, including high-tech manufacturing giants such as Germany, Japan and South Korea. By the end of this year, China will overtake Japan to be the world’s biggest operator of industrial robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), an industry lobby group. The pace of disruption in China is “unique in the history of robots,” says Gudrun Litzenberger, general secretary of the IFR, which is based in Germany, home to some of the world’s leading industrial-robot makers.
China’s technological transformation still has far to go — the country has just 36 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, compared with 292 in Germany, 314 in Japan and 478 in South Korea. But it is already changing the face of the global manufacturing industry. In the process, it is raising broader questions: can emerging economies still hope to follow the traditional route to prosperity that the developed world has relied upon since Britain’s industrial revolution in the 18th century? Or will robots assume many of the jobs that once pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty?
…
Chen Conghan, deputy manager at Ying Ao: ‘These machines are cheaper, more precise and more reliable than people’
China’s spending splurge on industrial robots has its roots in a pressing economic problem. From the 1980s onwards, as Beijing’s Communist rulers opened up to global trade, the country’s huge, cheap workforce helped make it the world’s biggest exporter of manufactured goods. Breakneck economic growth lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and transformed swaths of the country, as workers migrated from the countryside to the city. But a growing middle class and an ageing population have led to rising wages, eroding China’s competitive advantage. Partly because of the one-child policy, formally phased out in 2015, China’s working-age population is expected to fall from one billion people last year to 960 million in 2030, and 800 million by 2050.
In recent years, China’s central planners have been promoting automation as a way to fill the labour gap. They have promised generous subsidies — to be doled out by local governments — to smooth the way for Chinese companies both to use and build robots. In 2014, President Xi Jinping called for a “robot revolution” that would transform first China, and then the world. “Our country will be the biggest market for robots,” he said in a speech to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, “but can our technology and manufacturing capacity cope with the competition? Not only do we need to upgrade our robots, we also need to capture markets in many places.”
The march of the machines, not just in China but around the world, has been accelerated by sharp falls in the price of industrial robots and a steady increase in their capabilities. Boston Consulting Group, a management consultancy, predicts that the price of industrial robots and their enabling software will drop by 20 per cent over the next decade, while their performance will improve by 5 per cent each year.
《金融時報》報道視頻
Liu Hui, an entrepreneur in his forties, is making the most of China’s robot boom. In 2001, when he opened his first factory in Foshan, an industrial city of seven million people in Guangdong, he started out making knock-offs of electric fans. As his business grew, he moved to bona fide manufacturing, producing components for Chinese home appliance brands. Then, in 2012, spotting an opportunity in a growing market, he jumped into the emerging world of robotics. Liu now imports robotic arms from suppliers such as the Swedish-Swiss conglomerate ABB, and sells them on to Chinese manufacturers, helping them integrate the machines into their production lines. It is a highly specialised business. Most of his customers are component-makers who supply motors and other parts to large Chinese home-appliance brands such as Midea and Galanz, which produce air conditioners, refrigerators and more.
E-Deodar: Robot arms are programmed to complete repetitive tasks
Business has expanded so quickly in the past year that Liu does not have enough space in his factory for all the machinery he is assembling. He has to store parts designed to support a $23,000 ABB robot under a makeshift lean-to outside. “Things are changing rapidly,” he says. “The cost of labour is rising every year, and young people don’t want to work on the production line like their parents did, so we need machines to replace them.”
The stereotypical image of China’s factories can still be found in many places: tens of thousands of people in long lines hunched over sewing machines or slotting components into a printed circuit board. But that mode of manufacturing is starting to be replaced by a more mixed picture: partially automated production lines, with human workers interspersed at a few key points.
Meanwhile, China is developing its own robot makers. In September last year, Ningbo Techmation, a Shanghai-listed producer of machinery for the plastics industry, launched a subsidiary, E-Deodar, making robots that are 20-30 per cent cheaper than those produced by international companies such as ABB, Germany’s Kuka or Japan’s Kawasaki. The E-Deodar factory in Foshan, with its café, chill-out zone and open-plan production line, looks more like the offices of a Silicon Valley tech start-up than a Chinese industrial workhorse. “Our global rivals are very good at making robots but their costs are higher and they are not so good at understanding the needs of local customers,” says Zhang Honglei, the company’s 35-year-old, spiky-haired technical director.
The cost of labour is rising and young people don’t want to work on the production line like their parents did
Liu Hui, Chinese entrepreneur
This year, Zhang plans to produce 350 distinctively green-coloured robots, which are designed for use in plastic factories and sell for between $14,000 and $18,000 each; in three years’ time he hopes to produce 3,000 a year. “We have to move fast because automation is a scale business,” he says. “The bigger the better.”
Chinese manufacturers, which bought 66,000 of the 240,000 industrial robots sold globally last year, still largely prefer to buy international brands, according to Litzenberger of the IFR. But she expects that to change, particularly in the wake of the Beijing government throwing its full support behind the domestic robot industry in recent years. “They are developing very fast,” she says.
Chinese manufacturers, which bought 66,000 of the 240,000 industrial robots sold globally last year, still largely prefer to buy international brands, according to Litzenberger of the IFR. But she expects that to change, particularly in the wake of the Beijing government throwing its full support behind the domestic robot industry in recent years. “They are developing very fast,” she says.
Zhang Peng, vice-director of the economy and technology bureau, Shunde, Foshan
At an imposing, colonnade-fronted government building — known locally as the “White House” — in the Shunde district of Foshan, officials are trying to put President Xi’s call for a robot revolution into practice. The province of Guangdong has vowed to invest $8bn between 2015 and 2017 on automation. Zhang Peng, vice-director of Shunde’s economy and technology bureau, recently had his office in the building reduced in size, in line with the Communist party’s call for bureaucratic austerity. But the budget for industrial automation was unaffected. Zhang says robots are vital to overcome labour shortages and help Chinese companies make better quality, more competitive products. Unusually straight-talking for a Chinese official, he warns: “If manufacturing companies don’t improve, they won’t be able to survive.”
…
Government support for the integration of ever cheaper and more efficient industrial robots is good news for factory owners in China, who are facing a weak global economy and a slowdown in domestic demand. But the benefits of the robot revolution will not be shared equally across the world. Developing countries from India to Indonesia and Egypt to Ethiopia have long hoped to follow the example of China, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan before them: stimulating job creation and economic growth by moving agricultural workers into low-cost factories to make goods for export. Yet the rise of automation means that industrialisation is likely to generate significantly fewer jobs for the next generation of emerging economies. “Today’s low-income countries will not have the same possibility of achieving rapid growth by shifting workers from farms to higher-paying factory jobs,” researchers from the US investment bank Citi and the University of Oxford concluded in a recent report, The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, on the impact of technological change.
They argue that China’s rising labour costs are a “silver lining” for the country because they are driving technological advancement, in much the same way that an increase in wages in 18th-century Britain provided impetus to the world’s first industrial revolution. At the same time, according to Johanna Chua, an economist at Citi in Hong Kong, industrial laggards in parts of Asia and Africa face a “race against the machines” as they struggle to create sufficient manufacturing jobs before they are wiped out by the gathering robot army in China and beyond.
Tom Lembong, Indonesia’s 45-year-old trade minister, and a leading voice for liberalisation and reform within the government of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, is aware of the risks. “Many people don’t realise we’re seeing a quantum leap in robotics,” he says. “It’s a huge concern and we need to acknowledge the looming threat of this new industrial revolution. But as a political and business elite, we’re still stuck on debates about industrialisation that were settled in the 20th and even 19th centuries.”
Countries such as Indonesia are already suffering from something that the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has dubbed “premature de-industrialisation”. This describes a trend where emerging economies see their manufacturing sector begin to shrink long before the countries have reached income levels comparable to the developed world. Despite rapid economic growth over the past 15 years, Indonesia saw its manufacturing industry’s share of the economy peak in 2002. Analysts believe this is partly because of a failure to invest in infrastructure, and the country’s uncompetitive trade and investment policy, and partly due to globalisation.
Rodrik believes the country will never be able to grow at the kind of rapid rate experienced by China or South Korea. “Traditionally, manufacturing required very few skills and employed a lot of people,” he says. “Because of automation, the skills required have increased significantly and many fewer people are employed to run factories. What do you do with these extra workers? They won’t turn into IT entrepreneurs or entertainers; and, if they become restaurant workers, they will be paid much less than in a factory.”
Five factories a year have left the industrial park on the Indonesian island of Batam © Muhammad Fadli
The spread of robots makes it much harder for developing countries to get on the “escalator” of economic growth, he argues. That is bad news for the estimated two million young people who enter the workforce every year in Indonesia, a nation of 255 million, where 40 per cent live on $3 a day or less. Mahami Jaya Lumbanraja, a 22-year-old job-seeker on the Indonesian industrial island of Batam, is feeling the effects of the premature de-industrialisation phenomenon. For seven months he has been looking for a factory job in Batam, which sits just 20 miles from prosperous Singapore, but he has had no luck. Wearing faded jeans, a grey hoodie and an endearing smile, Lumbanraja says that although he has one year of experience working for Shimano, the Japanese manufacturer of bicycle gears and fishing tackle, he is not experienced enough to secure anything more than an entry-level position, and that there are many more job hunters than openings. “I can survive on the little money I get from busking and helping friends with construction work but I must get a proper factory job to save enough money so I can set up my own small shop later,” he says. Wages in Batam — around $230 per month — are double what Lumbanraja could earn in his home city of Medan, on the island of Sumatra. So he feels he must stay until he finds work.
Lumbanraja is one of about 700 Indonesians in their late teens and early twenties who visit the community centre at the Batamindo industrial park every day looking for work. In February, 3,000 people applied in person for just 80 positions at a Japanese-owned wiring factory there, a gathering so large that executives initially feared it was a labour protest.
Mahami Jaya Lumbanraja is one of 700 Indonesians who visit Batamindo every day looking for work © Muhammad Fadli
Batamindo is a joint venture between Singaporean and Indonesian investors that was backed by Presidents Lee Kuan Yew and Suharto — the two nations’ respective rulers — when it opened in 1990. Intended as the showpiece of Indonesia’s industrialisation strategy, it has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with it. In recent times, an average of five factories a year have left the industrial park for other countries and the number of people employed there has dropped to just 46,000, from a peak of 80,000 in 2000. That is despite the fact that wages today are between one-third and one-half of the level paid in China’s Guangdong province.
Lembong, a Harvard graduate who ran his own Singapore-based private equity firm before he was appointed trade minister in August, says the government is determined to tackle the twin problems at the heart of Indonesia’s economic malaise: weak infrastructure and over-regulation.
But some argue that reform will come too late. During its period of rapid industrialisation, China invested in the modern highways, railways and ports necessary to support its manufacturing sector. In contrast, the physical infrastructure in Batam and much of Indonesia has “not changed much since the 1970s,” says Mook Sooi Wah, general manager of Batamindo.
Indonesia actually had a slightly higher “robot density” than China when the latest figures were collated by the International Federation of Robotics in 2014, although the situation is likely to have changed dramatically since then given the pace of Beijing’s automation push. This anomaly was largely the result of China’s manufacturing workforce being so much bigger than that of Indonesia, which still has no government plan or backing for industrial automation.
Many people don’t realise we’re seeing a quantum leap in robotics
Tom Lembong, Indonesia’s trade minister
Indonesia’s regulatory process is as fusty as its infrastructure. Recently, legitimate shipments from a paper factory were held by customs at the Batam port because of a rule meant to stop the export of illegally sourced wood. These problems leave even Batam’s boosters exasperated.
Stefan Roll, a German manufacturing veteran who worked in China during its industrial take-off in the 1990s, enjoys living and working in Indonesia. But he worries that the country is missing its “golden opportunity” to become efficient enough to compete on a global scale. “When you are dealing with multinationals, time is money,” Roll says as he shows off his new factory in Batam, which assembles coffee machines for Nestlé. “But you can only do just-in-time manufacturing if you have good roads and infrastructure.”
While few doubt the depth of the challenges facing developing countries, not everyone sees the dilemma in such bleak terms. With wages in countries such as Indonesia and India much lower than in China and their populations still relatively young, some analysts believe they can attract more labour-intensive industries, such as garment-making, where widespread automation is not yet suitable.
“As China moves up the industrial chain, it’s actually freeing up a lot of opportunities for Southeast Asia and India,” says Anderson Chow, a robotics industry analyst at the investment bank HSBC, in Hong Kong.
Hal Sirkin, an expert on manufacturing at Boston Consulting Group, says that from the perspective of an economy such as India’s, it does not make sense to automate now because it would drive up the price of goods — “when they have one billion people who can make things cheaply”. He is among the tech optimists who believe that, in the medium term, automation will also create new business niches for emerging economies, mitigating the damage from the jobs that will be eradicated.
“We think you’re going to see more localisation rather than more scale,” says Sirkin. “I can put up a plant, change the software and manufacture all sorts of things, not in the hundreds of millions but runs of five million or 10 million units.”
But Carl Frey, an expert on employment and technology at the University of Oxford, warns that without better education and more skills, developing countries will struggle to take advantage of advancements in manufacturing.
“Technology is becoming increasingly skill-based,” he says. “Many of these countries don’t have a skilled workforce so they’re not very good at adopting these technologies.”
…
The Shangpin Home Collection factory where the use of robots to cut and drill wooden planks improved productivity by 40 per cent
China itself is not immune from the negative consequences of automation. More than 40 per cent of its 1.4 billion population still live in the countryside, many in poverty, having benefited only marginally from the urban economic miracle.
But the government is betting that the benefits of promoting cutting-edge manufacturing will outweigh the damage from the potential jobs lost. The industrial strategy announced by Beijing last year — known as Made in China 2025 — is designed not only to improve the technological capability of its factories but also to support the development of Chinese brands internationally.
Chow, the HSBC analyst, says that as Chinese companies try to increase their exports to alleviate the impact of the domestic slowdown, they are likely to focus more on the quality of their products: “Quite often part of that development is a better production process, involving robotics.”
Every year, the amount of time it takes for a company’s investment in a robot to pay off — known as the “payback period” — is narrowing sharply, making it more attractive for small Chinese companies and workshops to invest in automation. The payback period for a welding robot in the Chinese automotive industry, for instance, dropped from 5.3 years to 1.7 years between 2010 and 2015, according to calculations by analysts at Citi. By 2017, the payback period is forecast to shrink to just 1.3 years.
Li Gan, general manager of Shangpin Home Collection, Foshan
Automation is not just about putting cheaper and more efficient robot arms on the production line. Li Gan, the general manager of Shangpin Home Collection, which makes and sells customised home furniture, says the greater opportunity is to integrate robots on the factory floor with real-time data from customers and automated logistics systems.
Thanks to the use of robots, the factory that Shangpin opened in Foshan in 2014 was 40 per cent more productive than its previous plant, even though it employs 20 per cent fewer people. Later this year, it will start up the machines at its newest and biggest production base, where it hopes to improve productivity fourfold with just double the number of staff, by using more robots to move supplies around the factory floor and help pack outbound shipping containers.
Drilling wooden slats for the company’s diverse range of beds, wardrobes and other bespoke furniture used to be a painstaking and sometimes dangerous process. Now a worker simply picks up each piece of wood, scans a barcode and puts the wood on a conveyor belt that takes it to the robot arm. The finished product returns on another belt. The process in between is strikingly complicated: Shangpin had to design a device to make sure that each slat would be aligned in the right way for it to be grasped by the robot arm, and the drilling specifications for the slats have to be pre-programmed and recorded in a barcode, because the robots do not yet have any artificial intelligence capability. Li Gan points out that human oversight and decision-making is still crucial. “Automation is just a technical process but what is more important is our thinking about how best to do this,” he says. “Every time we change something, we ask: is it more effective to do this using humans or robots?”
Every time we change something, we ask: is it more effective to do this using humans or robots?
Li Gan, general manager of Shangpin Home Collection, Foshan
Boston Consulting Group forecasts that the percentage of tasks handled by advanced robots will rise from 8 per cent today to 26 per cent by the end of the decade, driven by China, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the US, which together will account for 80 per cent of robot purchases. Sirkin at BCG says that the rapid expansion of automation could be compared to the difference between the “human learning curve” and Moore’s Law, which posited that computing power could double every 18 months to two years. “Even if you’re very good, humans can only double their productivity at best every 10 years,” he says. In contrast, researchers can push robots to double their productivity every four years, he estimates. “Compounded over time, that makes a big difference.”
As China and other industrial leaders build more and better robots, the tasks they can take on will expand. Butchery, for example, was long considered the sort of skill that machines would struggle to develop, because of the need for careful hand-eye co-ordination and the manipulation of non-uniform slabs of meat. But Sirkin has watched robots cut the fat off meat much more efficiently than humans, thanks to the use of cheaper and more responsive sensors. “It’s becoming economically feasible to use machines to do this because you save another 3 or 4 per cent of the meat — and that’s worth a lot on a production line, where you can move quickly.
“There are things that humans can do better than robots,” he adds. “But they are getting less and less.”
評論
目前還沒有任何評論
登錄後才可評論.
