Chinese Factory Replaces 90% of Humans with Robots Sees 250% Production Increase | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Factory Replaces 90% of Humans with Robots Sees 250% Production Increase

monetarywatch.com

36 pointsSQL22196 comments

One of China’s first unmanned factories in the city of Dongguan recently replaced 590 of its workers with robots and the results were astounding. While the factory used to be run by 650 employees, only 60 of those people still work at the factory and their primary job is to make sure the machines are running properly, not working on manufacturing.

Since the shift to robots, pieces per person per month has risen from 8,000 to 21,000—a whopping 250% increase. While some may argue that quality of the product will decrease with the use of robots, this doesn’t appear to be the case either. The number of product defects has decreased from 25% to just 5%.

So the old useful-output production per month was 650 * 8000 * 0.75 = 3900000 pieces. Now it's 60 * 21000 * 0.95 = 1197000.

Useful output in pieces per month is now only 31% of what it used to be. The much lower defect rate might save a lot of money, but I wonder if profits actually improved following such a dramatic output reduction, even considering savings on wages and defective parts.

Good find - I would have missed that they are speaking about pieces per person and just asumed they really increased their output

actually, oldWorkers = 650 and now Workers = 60 Robots = 590

the 60 workers do not produce, only watching the robots.

the robots do produce.

oldProduction = 650 * 8000 * .75 = 3900000

newProduction = 590 * 21000 * .95 = 11770500

increase = (11770500 - 3900000) / 3900000 = 201.807%

i believe tfa should write 8000 per worker vs 21000 per robot since it's written that 60 workers do not produce, naturally that only means 0 per worker

John Henry is not going to be happy about this.

There is no reason to assume the 590 workers were replaced 1:1 with robots. The number of robots is unknown. The known values are FiredWorkers:590 CurrentWorkers: 60 PiecesPerPersonOLD: 8000 PiecesPerPersonNEW: 21,000 DefectsOLD: 25% DefectsNEW: 5%

Using this data it would appear that the factory produces less as philipkglass's math indicated. dingleberry's math assumes a 1:1 ratio of persons turned into robots. The article never says this. It only says "pieces per person." Robots are not yet persons.

A better written article wouldn't require this reading between the lines.

Replicator make me a Cell-Phone

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