At present, China’s economy is in a critical period of transformation and upgrading, and every transformation and upgrading of economic structure can not be separated from the transformation and upgrading of “human”. People may not only be the object of the tide, but also must be the driving force of transformation and upgrading. What kind of signal does industrial transformation and upgrading send to human training institutions, especially vocational education that directly transports technical skills? How do we respond?

PCI-7342 At the beginning of 2020, the sudden coronavirus epidemic made many factories face the situation of “no one available”, but Yantai Foxconn was not greatly affected, and work resumed on February 3, 2020, and the production order was stable.

“The sudden epidemic has made us realize more deeply that only technology-intensive, intelligent and collaborative enterprises can quickly resume production.” Foxconn (Yantai) science and technology industrial park top administrative director Zheng Guangjie said. In fact, not only Yantai Foxconn, in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other manufacturing developed southeast coastal areas, more and more factories began to intelligent, unmanned transformation. Accompanied by the renewal of human resources.

PCI-7342 Globally, smart factories and industrial robots are more and more widely used in production, and machine replacement has become an inevitable trend of manufacturing transformation and upgrading. In China, the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry is increasingly inseparable from the support of high-quality technical skills.

Machine replacement is the general trend

In 2009, a recent graduate of the Mechatronics major at Weihai Vocational College went to work as a lock screw on SONY’s laptop production line at Foxconn in Yantai with two certificates: his diploma and a certificate of advanced maintenance electrician.

PCI-7342 “It takes six screws to lock a computer, and it takes 1,200 computers a day to lock 7,200 screws.” “Mastery is easy, but dull and untechnical,” Mattmattmattrecalls just now.

At that time, Yantai Foxconn, looking at the “vast is all people” : assembly of a laptop computer has 60 processes, a production line needs 60 people; 720 people working on 12 production lines in one workshop; There are 100,000 industrial workers in Yantai.

PCI-7342 After the trial period, the MA has just chosen to go to the Ministry of Automation, making some equipment and tools to aid production on the assembly line. “The front-line pay is high, but the department specialise in it, and I want to learn more about technology.”

Starting in 2013, Mattresses are paying attention to a gradual reduction in the number of people in the workshop: “Now there are only a dozen people in a production line that once needed 60, and SONY’s laptop line has been scrapped as the global notebook business declines.”

Indeed, what the French feel is not personal. In 2012, Foxconn began the “machine replacement” experiment. After four years of exploration, in 2016 began to force, by the first half of 2019, Foxconn has a total of 80,000 robots in various factories in the mainland, and its entire plan is to lay out millions of “iron men”.

PCI-7342 By contrast, the number of people employed at Foxconn’s Yantai plant alone has fallen by 70,000 from 100,000 in 2009, when the company first came into power, to 30,000 in 2019.

In a decade, the head of the Department of automation, having made his career as an assembly-line worker, has developed more than 50 kinds of equipment and tools.

“Most recently, I spent half a year with two colleagues to develop a hot melt machine that can melt 100 nuts at a time, which is equivalent to about 16 people’s work.” Mattresses has just said.

PCI-7342 Now the Foxconn factory in Yantai, the dust-free workshop is clean, bright and neat, and you can no longer see the “magnificent people”, more uniform mechanical arms and various auxiliary production tools. The business of the Yantai factory has also transitioned from the assembly of laptop computers to the production of self-branded white goods.

What is a machine? The idea, in the eyes of the MA, includes automated transport wagons, automatic screw locking machines, hot-melt machines. “Anything that can replace man is collectively called a machine.” In Foxconn ten years ago, the Mattresses have just gradually had their own judgment, “machine replacement is the general trend.”

In his view, machine replacement, on the one hand, is the market reasons, the traditional foundry business gradually reduced, labor costs continue to increase, the introduction of automation equipment will be stripped from the manufacturing industry, both can reduce costs, but also enhance competitiveness; On the other hand, the strategic shift of enterprises from foundries to independent brands also determines the importance of independent research and development.