The first author of this article conducted field research and interviews with nearly 20 companies in Guangdong Province in 2018, including companies that have implemented the process of "robots replacing humans," robot manufacturers, and robotics application training institutions. At the enterprise level, the interviewees that the author reached were mainly corporate management interviewees, including human resources department managers and technical department managers. These interviewees can provide a general introduction to the company's technology upgrading and labor conditions but fail to provide specific information on changes in the labor process in the workshop. Therefore, the author also searched for workers with relevant experience—most of which came from companies undergoing or had completed automation upgrades or trainees from training institutions who wish to cater to the trend of robotization through skill upgrading. At the same time, the authors also conducted participatory observation. In August 2018, the two authors entered Factory B and Factory C, which were the cases used in this article, as general workers in the workshop. Using the factory floor as a field of observation, we observed and compared the production processes of manual and automated lines, as well as the labor processes of workers. By working with ordinary workers for an extended period, we were able to experience the labor intensity in the workshop, the managerial control methods, and the workers' cognition and attitude toward robotization.
Based on the above interview and observation data, this article selects three factories for the case analysis. The three cases selected are quite representative. First, the three factories belong to the following three industries: the auto parts industry, household appliance industry, and furniture industry. Different industries have different levels of progress in promoting automation. For example, Factory A, which belongs to the auto parts industry, successfully adopted automation before introducing relevant national policies, while for household appliances (factory B), furniture manufacturing (factory C), and other industries, automation was carried out following the industrial upgrading policy in recent years. Therefore, the three cases can reflect the different stages of robotization. Second, the three case factories belong to different types of capital and enterprises; Factory A is a Japanese-owned enterprise, a secondary supplier of an automobile manufacturer, and a medium-sized enterprise; Factory B is a private enterprise that does both independent R&D and OEM production and is a large-scale enterprise; Factory C is a Hong Kong-Taiwan joint venture, and its products are independently developed and produced. It is also a medium-sized enterprise.Footnote 1 Finally, the degrees of automation of the factories in the three cases range between semiautomation and high-level automation, which is in line with the status quo of most Chinese companies that have implemented automation upgrades; however, the three cases have certain differences in terms of the penetration rates of robots and the methods of automation. These differences also have different effects on the labor process and working relations in the workshop. The specific conditions of the three cases will be introduced below.
Factory A
Factory overview
Factory A is located in the automobile industrial park of the famous Japanese automobile manufacturer S in Guangzhou. It was established in 2004 and belongs to a wholly Japanese-owned automobile seat manufacturer. Its products are automobile seat frames. Thanks to Japan's advanced robotics technology, Factory A has already started automation upgrades and robotization for its production line transformation. According to some veteran workers, the factory purchased industrial robots and used them for welding seat frame components at the beginning of the establishment of the factory in 2004, but they were only used on a small scale at the time. In 2012, Factory A successfully transformed approximately 20 production lines for the seat frames of five car brands. Today, nearly 90% of the production lines in Factory A have upgraded the production to "mainly welding robots, supplemented by a small amount of manual welding, and then supplemented by the manual assembly and loading and unloading."
Changes in the labor process
The products of Factory A are car seat frames. Its main production process involves assembling and welding various seat frame parts, and welding is the core production process. Before robotization, there were approximately 300 welders in the factory; now, there are only dozens of welders engaged in manual welding in the factory, and they are distributed on a few manual welding production lines or automated production lines engaged in welding the small parts left by a few robots.
We take the front seatback frame of a certain model as an example to illustrate the production process of this specific product and the changes in the labor process of workers before and after the introduction of robots. The production of this seat back frame consists of the following nine processes: (1) sidearm welding; (2) angle adjuster welding; (3) handle welding; (4) headrest welding; (5) assembly welding; (6) connecting rod welding; (7) spring net assembly; (8) precision inspection; and (9) quality inspection. Before the introduction of robots, these nine procedures were all completed manually. The first six procedures are completed by welders, who need to assemble the parts, weld the corresponding parts, and then put them on the transmission line and pass them to the next station; the last three inspection procedures are usually completed by general workers. Each manual welding production line needs approximately ten workers.
Following the introduction of robots, the production process itself has not changed much, and only some procedures and operations have been "transferred" to robots, but the content of the work performed by workers has undergone major changes. Workers who were originally engaged in assembly and welding now only need to put the corresponding workpiece on the corresponding workbench of the robot and perform simple assembly operations (such as installing small parts, installing steel wires, and installing springs) and fix them with clamps. The robot completes the welding operation according to the set path. When the robot is working, the worker not only needs to monitor the machine, but also has his own work to do. Since a robot usually corresponds to two workstations, the worker needs to go to the adjacent workstation to complete the preparation work of taking out the welded workpiece, transferring it to the next workstation, and repeating the above assembly work.
It can be observed from the above labor process that the skilled workers who originally engaged in welding degenerated into general workers who perform auxiliary tasks for robots. According to an interviewed worker, these auxiliary tasks "do not require special training, no technical workers needed, general workers are fine. Workers just need to be taught how to assemble parts in the early stage of the job, and now they are still recruiting interns from vocational schools to work… There is no need for workers to operate robots, and there are special maintenance personnel when there is a problem" (Interview Record A-XXX).
The use of robots has not made the job of workers easier. As a Japanese company, Factory A also pursues Toyota's Lean Production. The management accurately calculates the time required for each process and even each operation in seconds. An interviewed worker used his operation as an example to introduce this lean production method. If the robot welding time for a certain part is set to 60 s, the three steps of spring installation, precision inspection, and patching are required, which each takes 20 s to complete. The former requires the same time as the last three steps. The robot assistant's job is to remove the workpiece within 60 s and complete the subsequent three steps of spring installation, precision inspection, and patching. (Interview Record A-ZWX). So-called lean production is embodied here as not wasting a second and not producing any redundant actions.
Following the introduction of robots, this lean production method was more thoroughly implemented. In the manual welding stage, although managers also emphasize production efficiency and reduce wasted time, these are usually regulated by the overall daily output, and it is impossible to control each operation that the workers perform precisely. Workers have to assemble and weld. Some operations are fast, and some are slow. Workers can also coordinate and cooperate with each other. However, after introducing robots, the production speed cannot be "artificially" interfered with by workers because the robot speed is fixed, and people must keep up with the rhythm of the robot. A veteran worker working in Factory A for more than ten years said, "The job now is twice as tiring as before. Because the output is higher and the pace of work is faster, people have to follow the robots. Machines have quickened the pace and men have to keep up with them. In the past, it was manual welding. People could do it faster or slower, and it didn’t matter if you did it slower. Now everyone complains (after robotization) that we will live on air" (Interview Record A-ZQH).
Changes in working conditions and employment methods
Due to the overall increase in car sales in recent years and the establishment of an internal collective bargaining mechanism by auto parts companies after Honda's strike in 2010, Factory A, as a manufacturer of auto parts, has a higher level of wages and working conditions compared to others in the manufacturing industry. Workers entering the factory are usually dispatched workers with a basic salary not lower than the local minimum wage standard and enjoy a year-end bonus equivalent to five months' salary. Workers will have a certain percentage of salary increase every year after they are converted to regular workers, and they can apply for rank promotions based on their work performance. Taking a regular worker (general job post) with eight years of service as an example, his monthly salary is approximately 4500 yuan; when adding the provident fund and year-end bonus, his average monthly income can reach 8,000 yuan (Interview Record A-ZWX).
Welders, as the workers most affected by the robotization process due to their skill requirements and exposure to harmful substances, such as dust in the working environment, are entitled to a monthly skill allowance and environmental allowance of 350 yuan, which are included in the fixed salary as the calculation base for overtime pay and the year-end bonus. After the introduction of welding robots, a large number of welders were forced to become general workers. The management once issued a notice to cancel the allowances that welders originally enjoyed on the grounds that welders did not need to engage in welding operations. This reduction in benefits was met with protests from welders. The welders in a certain production line expressed dissatisfaction through the suspension of work, but then the entire line of workers was fired; additionally, most other welders refused to sign the company's resolution and constantly asked the union to negotiate and communicate with the management. Finally, after a year of coordination by the labor union, both parties reached a resolution—the allowance for welders no longer engaging in welding operations was reduced to 120 yuan per month, and the remuneration of welders still engaged in welding operations remained unchanged.
After the successful transformation of the factory's production line, the number of workers gradually decreased. Before 2012, the total number of employees in the factory was more than 1000. In 2018, the total number of employees was reduced to more than 700, decreasing approximately one-third. Unlike the other two case factories in this article, Factory A provides a better salary and has a lower natural employee turnover. Therefore, the method of layoffs adopted by management is their so-called rationalized reduction of staff plan, that is, by negotiating financial compensation with employees for their resignation. Employees who leave after the negotiation can receive at least an economic compensation equivalent to "N + 1" of their monthly salary.
However, layoffs and the decline in the remuneration of some workers are only the most direct negative consequences of robotization. The replacement of core processes by robots means that the demand for skilled workers in factories is reduced, and most of the needs are for low-skilled auxiliary workers. This change means that the high-wage and high-benefit salary system adopted by management to maintain a stable, skilled workforce in the past has been challenged. Since ordinary workers can perform auxiliary tasks after simple training, the factory does not need to continue to pay high wages to keep these experienced and skilled workers. Therefore, the employment method of Factory A has also changed in the past few years; in the past, workers generally entered the factory as dispatch workers, and after one year, when they passed the assessment, they could be transferred to regular workers. However, it takes two to three years for dispatch workers to become regular workers in recent years. At the same time, the factory also added two types of employment, i.e., student workers and temporary workers. During the peak production period, the factory recruited many students for internships through cooperation with vocational schools and recruited temporary workers through labor service companies. The wages of these two types of workers were only 13 yuan per hour (equivalent to the local minimum wage standard), and they do not enjoy other benefits; thus, the compensation paid to these workers is far lower than the labor cost of hiring regular workers. These two types of workers not only meet the flexible employment needs of enterprises but also save enterprises' labor costs.
Factory B
Factory overview
Factory B is a large-scale air-conditioning manufacturer, which is now part of a famous national household appliance enterprise Group T. As a large enterprise with a market value of nearly RMB 400 billion, Group T has spared no effort in investing in promoting technological transformation. Since 2011, it has carried out a "three-step" intelligent transformation of household air-conditioning production: automation, informationalization, and intelligentization. Different from the technological transformation of ordinary enterprises aiming to "reduce workforce and improve efficiency," Group T's technology upgrading aims to build an "intelligent system" that includes production, logistics, and sales. In addition to introducing robots and building smart factories, it is also necessary to use big data analysis and open up the production chain to make all businesses interconnected. Factory B, which has spent hundreds of millions of yuan on technological upgrades, has become an intelligent manufacturing demonstration base widely publicized by the media and a benchmark for the industrial Internet.
In terms of automated production, Factory B currently has 20 indoor unit and outdoor unit assembly lines. Two automated production lines (one for indoor units and one for outdoor units) were launched in 2015, but the remaining 18 production lines still relied on manual assembly. The automated production line currently achieves a 65% automation rate. Each production line has more than 40 robots, but 20–30 workers are still needed to perform the auxiliary tasks that the robots cannot complete. The number of workers has been reduced by more than half.
Changes in the labor process
The production of the indoor and outdoor air conditioner units mainly includes assembling various parts and welding a small number of parts. Take the production line of the outdoor air-conditioner unit as an example. The line contains approximately 30 processes, such as placing foam boxes and metal base plates, labeling, placing compressors, fixing compressors, unplugging foot plugs, welding condensers, assembling condensers, installing high- and low-pressure valves, and adding nitrogen. The most numerous positions in a production line are assembly positions, and the workers engaged in assembly positions are general workers, that is, workers who can perform the job without mastering special skills.
The production of the outdoor air-conditioner units is almost the same on the automated and manual lines. The difference is that more than half of the processes on the automated production line are completed by robots. Taking the automated line of an outdoor air-conditioner unit as an example, among the 30 production procedures, machines or robots performed 20 procedures, and workers completed the remaining ten procedures. Although they are on the same production line, the workers' jobs and robots' jobs are separated. Most workers' jobs are auxiliary tasks for loading and unloading materials, and some jobs require high flexibility but do not have skill requirements, such as wiring and wrapping sound insulation cotton and fixing coils. Except for a small number of welders, halogen leakage inspectors, and versatile workers, most positions have low skill requirements. A line leader who has worked for many years said, "working in the automated line is the same as the manual line outside. The equipment is to be repaired by specialists. We do not need to understand, but just need to pay attention to our safety" (Interview Record B-SC). After robotization, the skill requirements of front-line workers have not been upgraded.
In terms of production management, both automated and manual production lines are Taylorist assembly lines, which seem to be the same. However, in actual production, each process on the manual line has a button that workers can press to pause to handle a situation in which production cannot be continued. At the same time, the workers of each position are very close to each other and can know each other's production situation. They can help each other and adjust the production speed. When the author worked as a novice, workers at the neighboring post often "lend a hand" to help complete the task. While automated production lines and robots jointly control the production speed, most front-line workers are scattered between machines. They need to adapt to the high-speed machine production rhythm, and it is difficult to obtain help from other workers.
Changes in working conditions and employment methods
Since robotization has not yet been fully implemented in Factory B, we were able to compare the differences in labor conditions between automated production lines and manual production lines in the same period. Before entering Factory B for participatory observation, the author had the opportunity to formally visit the factory and interview the management personnel. Although managers claimed that workers in automated production lines have to meet higher requirements in terms of academic qualifications and skill training and that their terms of employment are better than those in manual lines (Interview Record B-M1), this claim is quite different from the findings of the author's field investigation. In fact, the automation upgrade of the factory does not require higher education and skills for front-line workers, nor does it bring significant changes to the terms of employment. First, newly recruited workers are randomly assigned to each production line according to the labor demand of each department. The personnel staff stated that regardless of the type of production line, the requirements for general workers are uniform. Second, after the author came into contact with the workers on the automated production line, they found that among them were middle-aged general workers who had been working for less than three months, as well as summer student workers who had not graduated. They are no different from workers on the manual production line regarding academic qualifications, skills, recruitment, and orientation training. Finally, regarding employment, the salary calculation method for the automated line and the manual line is the same, which consists of the following three parts: basic salary, overtime pay, and job allowance. The basic salary is the local minimum wage standard, and the job allowances are slightly different depending on the job operating skills and the operating difficulty coefficient. Since the work content and the education and skills of the workers in the automated line are not significantly different from those of the workers in the manual line, their wages are far less than the declared wage by the managers; if there are limited overtime hours, their income may not be as good as that of manual line workers. It can be seen that the so-called labor upgrading in Factory B did not happen to the production workers of the automated line.
In terms of the total number and methods of employment, although Group T, to which Factory B affiliates, has publicized through media the significant reduction in the number of workers needed for household air conditioning through robotization, the reality is that Factory B has been in a state of labor shortage and constant recruitment in recent years. Factory B uses the local minimum wage as the basic salary, with long overtime hours and high labor intensity; therefore, the employee turnover rate has been high, with a monthly natural turnover rate of 10–20%. A large slogan was hung in a conspicuous place in the factory area, claiming that an "internal recommendation of general workers will be rewarded with one thousand yuan, without an upper limit." When age restrictions are relaxed and academic qualifications are not required, the factory still needs to establish an incentive mechanism to encourage employees to introduce relatives and friends to apply for jobs in their factory. In addition to the abovementioned methods, Factory B began to cooperate with some schools to recruit summer workers to compensate for labor shortages during the peak summer production period. The discrepancy between the publicity of Factory B and the actual employment situation reflects the hidden tension between the input cost and return, the projected image, and the actual utility that the enterprise faces in the process of promoting intelligent manufacturing and "robots replacing humans."
Factory C
Factory overview
Factory C is affiliated with a Hong Kong-Taiwan joint venture and was established in Guangzhou in 2000; the company's main product is office furniture. Its office computer chairs are among the top sales of similar products on an e-commerce platform. With the increase in sales volume, recruitment became increasingly difficult. Factory C began to introduce automated production in 2017 and successively purchased more than 20 robots. These robots are used for component assembly, cushion covering, and finished product packaging and handling processes and are distributed within the two main production workshops of the factory. Among them, ten robots engaged in assembly and covering processes are distributed within an independent automated production area; several robots with the same function are scattered around the manual production line; two sets of automatic packaging and handling robots are located at the shipping port in two production departments. In general, Factory C has been practicing semiautomated production of manually assisted robots on a small scale.
Changes in the labor process
The factory focuses on high-end office computer chairs with "ergonomic" designs and market prices ranging from one thousand to nearly 10,000 yuan. In fact, the production process and technology do not have very high technical content. A computer chair is mainly composed of cushions (optional headrest), seat cushions, armrests, and chair legs. The production line is also classified according to the main components and processes, such as seat cushion group, assembly group, and packaging group. To put it simply, the production process of a computer chair mainly includes the following steps: covering process (cover and fix the fabric on the cushion or cushion frame), assembly process (assemble the inner and outer frame, cushion, back cushion, and other parts with screws), and finally quality inspection, disassembly, and packaging.
Instead of automating and upgrading the production line as a whole as at Factory A and Factory B, the use of robots in Factory C is primarily reflected in the assignment of partial processes to robots for completion rather than transforming existing production lines. The robots currently introduced are mainly responsible for the three processes of cushion covering, assembly, packaging, and handling. Take the cushion covering of a certain model of computer chair as an example. The manual covering process first requires covering and wrapping the fabric on the outer frame of the cushion, then nailing and fixing the outer frame with a special nailer, and finally, cutting off the excess fabric with scissors. It takes more than one minute for workers to complete a workpiece, and they need to have a certain degree of proficiency and considerable operating skills to be competent. If an automated covering robot is used, the robot's work cycle is approximately 60 s per workpiece. One robot can produce at two or four stations, and at least one worker must assemble parts. This worker's job is to place the cushion on the mold of the first station, place the fabric on it and fix it with a clamp. This is the preparation for assembly, and then the robot arm moves to the station, according to its set track, to complete the task of nailing. During the 60 s in which the robot is engaged in nailing, the worker moves to the second station, removes the processed workpiece, and repeats the assembly preparation work. This cycle of cooperating with the robot to work on two workstations alternately is repeated.
It can be observed from the above labor process that the demand for skilled workers in the automation department is not high, and most of the manual work is auxiliary work, such as loading, unloading, and assembly. Compared with the skilled workers on the manual line (such as workers engaged in covering and inspection), the demand for skilled workers in the automation department is reduced; however, compared with most general workers (such as screwing) on manual lines, the skill requirements are not much different.
In terms of the production rhythm, robot assistants cannot control the rhythm autonomously. They must keep up with the speed of the robots. On a packaging line composed of workers and handling robots, the robots located in the later process will bring visible pressure to the workers in the previous process, and the workers have to speed up the pace of work to prevent the robot from stopping for too long. In contrast, in the manual line, the rhythm of the assembly line has a certain degree of flexibility and does not overemphasize the time spent in each process. Workpieces that are temporarily too late to be processed on the assembly line can be temporarily placed in the corresponding storage area of each station, and workers at the front and rear stations will also help each other when needed. Therefore, the pace of work on the manual line is relatively more elastic. The accelerated production pace on the packaging line caused dissatisfaction among some old workers when the robot was first introduced. They tried to deliberately destroy the carton to make its appearance irregular, causing the robot to fail to recognize the package and activate its protective device to stop operation. Later, the management reprimanded the old workers and eventually replaced them with new workers; after that, sabotage seldom occurred (Interview Log C-LJQ).
Changes in working conditions and employment methods
Although the automation department does not have high requirements for the actual labor skills of robot operators, management still highlights the advantages of the department in terms of employment remuneration, such as giving workers a monthly technical allowance of hundreds of yuan, providing internal training, and issuing a "robot operation certificate." However, not all workers who work with robots receive this treatment. Those packaging and handling workers on the packaging line, as well as workers who are responsible for trimming and placing the leftovers at the back end of the robot, do not need to touch the machine for their work; thus, there was no improvement in treatment, and no additional training was required.
In terms of employment, the factory is researching and promoting "full production automation" on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is solving the current shortage of labor through multiple channels. A "Feasibility Analysis Report on the Production of Comprehensive Automation Projects" disclosed by technicians of Factory C shows that the proportions of productivity by covering robots or assembly robots in the automation department (the number of robots corresponding to each model product is usually one or two) are all higher than 50% and reach up to 86%. The report's analysis pointed out that continuous debugging and optimization of machine performance and production management improvement can further improve the production efficiency of robots. At the same time, management is also considering extending the working hours of robots and even adding night shifts to increase the overall production capacity.
Although more than a dozen robots have been introduced, the problem of lack of labor in Factory C still exists. Due to low wages and high labor intensity, newly recruited workers often leave after a few days of trial work. In 2018, the factory added two recruitment channels: one cooperates with a township middle school, recruiting more than 100 fresh graduates to work summer jobs in the factory; the other cooperates with labor agencies, which assist the factory in recruiting temporary workers. Due to the persistent shortage of labor and the increasing number of orders in recent years, the automation process has not yet triggered layoffs in Factory C, and robots have replaced only a small number of porters. However, with the "all-around advancement" of automation, the unemployment risks faced by workers are increasing. In particular, hundreds of older female workers have worked for a long time and settled locally. They are worried about whether they will be able to continue to keep their jobs in the future.