On: First unmanned factory takes shape in Dongguan City (2015)

[dmoy]

If you read the original Chinese source, it's saying

Old: 650 workers * 8000pieces per person per month

New: 60 workers * 21000 pieces per person per month

It's a bit ambiguous but it makes it sound like total production output has dropped fourfold.

[philipov → dmoy]

Even then, it's not telling the whole story without knowing the cost per worker and the value per unit. When you take costs into account, you can get a situation where lowering production will increase earnings.

Taking your numbers and plugging in some values like 75 per worker and 0.01 per unit would increase earnings by 250%.

[dmoy → philipov]

Yea, I'm wondering if we can dig up a Chinese language source and see if it has more details. I'm guessing something got horribly lost in translation.

Or, possibly, the factory managers are purposefully not giving the whole story...

[walshemj → philipov]

and the cost of amortizing the new plant

[6nf → dmoy]

Previously they made 5.2 million pieces per month and now they make 1.26 million pieces per month.

Seems like a disaster to me!

[noobermin → 6nf]

If they reduced their workforce by 90%, so that the cost of labor is now a tenth of what it was, then they may have improved overall profit.

Of course, that doesn't include overhead, or anything else.

[weaksauce → noobermin]

It it's an immediate decrease in output but they are planning on moving from 60 robots to 1000 robots in 2 years. so the 2 year expected capacity is 21,000,000 with a 5% defect rate vs. the 5,200,000 units with a 25% defect rate and wages/benefits for all those people.

[deelowe → 6nf]

All that matters is per unit cost. The rest is just a matter of scaling up.