
Foxconn Confirms Plans for U.S. Investment - JamilD
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/apple-s-top-assembler-foxconn-confirms-plans-for-u-s-investment
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Animats
Why not? Foxconn is going robotic. Their new Foxbots are good enough to
assemble iPhones. So why not make them nearer to the US market and avoid
tariff problems?

50,000 employees is small for Foxconn. They have 1,300,000 employees now.
(Yes, they really are that big.) They replaced 60,000 workers with robots
earlier in 2016.[1] They plan to replace a lot more.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966)

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chollida1
Smart move by both Apple and Foxconn.

Having your manufacturing based in one country isn't a good idea in terms of
risk management.

Natural disasters, shipping delays, or presidential will could shut down
production pretty quickly.

Trump will be very quick to use this as a point to show he was correct. I'd
expect Foxconn to get some very good concessions out of this. SoftBank's
Masayoshi continues to amaze me. Instead of talking tough about Trump's local
manufacturing bluster, he quickly accepted it and started deal making with
this new reality.

I'm no political expert but Id' be very surprised if Trump doesn't start
picking fights with other governments about manufacturing jobs and tariffs.
Companies and supply chains who don't anticipate this are going to be in for a
rough 4 years.

Bloomberg's SPLC<GO> function is going to get alot more use in the coming
days/weeks as people start to map out who is bring jobs back to America and
who is standing firm:)

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norea-armozel
The problem is that these aren't high paying jobs likely like those in actual
semiconductor fabrication. Plus, Foxconn already utilizes robots in the
majority of it's facilities so you're not going to get much out of this as
they continue the process of automation throughout their production processes.
Expect some jobs, but most of them will be always replaceable with machines.
All that's happened here is Trump got played by Foxconn.

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blackguardx
I've been in many electronics factories, including ones used by Apple. There
is still a lot of human labor. When people talk about robots replacing people
in these factories, they aren't talking about robots driving screws or
connecting assemblies together. Robots can do that, but many companies'
demands for agile manufacturing make them hard to bring in.

I was in the factory that makes Apple Earpods. They are one of Apple's highest
produced products because they ship with all their iOS devices. All the
assembly was done by hand. They were proud that they added a robot to the
line. Do you know what the robot did? It moved parts from one station to
another station 12 feet away. They previously had a human doing that.

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JoeAltmaier
Nevertheless in the last 10 years factory automation has been explosive. Its
not all done (or we'd have much higher unemployment) but its hurtling down
that road.

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damaru
I'm not clear about China/Japanese investment in the USA but doesn't that feel
like the US is loosing it's edge and competitiveness. From an uninformed point
of view it surely feels like China and Japan are actually in a position of
control here more than ever?

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ibejoeb
dang: where did we arrive on the politics matter yesterday? Is this in or out?
Serious question.

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dang
It's clearly on topic for HN in general, but has to be out this week, given
that we asked people to err on the side of flagging politics and the reason
the investment was made was political.

Doing this experiment for a week is demonstrating how inseparable the
political aspects of these stories are, and how "just ban politics" is not an
answer to the flamewar and incivility problems that HN faces. So when it's
done, our current thinking is to revert to the status quo ante, with some
additional guidelines to encourage civility and to ask people not to use the
site _primarily_ for politics.

~~~
adiabatty
A pity. I was hoping the ban could last a month or longer. The site is
_wonderful_ now.

~~~
tptacek
I'm liking it too!

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adrienne
Isn't HN supposed to be "detoxing" from politics this week?

