Can you believe it, maybe the clothes you're wearing, the mobile phone you're playing with, the car you're sitting in...... All of them may not be produced by humans, but are all made by machines autonomously. This is the "Black Light Factory".
What's even more unexpected is that there are already many black light factories in China, such as the well-known Foxconn, Haier and Xiaomi, some of their factories have realized unmanned production in the whole process.
Although it sounds very advanced, is it really reliable that no one participates? If it is really promoted, will the workers be unemployed? To answer these questions, we must first know how the black light factory works?
What is a Black Light Factory?
The black light factory is mainly composed of fully automatic machine equipment and a small number of management personnel. Whenever a worker is off duty, the equipment runs autonomously and continues to manufacture the product, a process that no longer requires a large number of workers. Because after the workers get off work, the lights in the factory are also turned off, and the production workshop is dark, so it is called the "black light factory".
But in the case of no one to operate and supervise the operation of the machine, is not afraid of accidents? You can rest assured that the reason why manufacturers dare to produce unmanned production is mainly due to the high degree of automation of the current production equipment, such as the mechanical arm on the assembly line, with a set of visual identity system, you can complete manufacturing, packaging, handling, and Compared with workers, these equipment can work 24 hours a day without interruption, and will not get sick, even if there is a failure, it only needs to be repaired by a technician to continue to be used.
According to McKinsey data, by 2025, more than half of the world's factories will be transformed into black light factories, and the machine substitution model will be popularized on a large scale, and the work that used to take 180 people to complete can be completed by only 12 people in the black light factory, and these 12 people are mainly engineers and maintenance personnel who manage equipment.
They only need to look at the data of the device in front of the computer, and if they find an abnormality, they will go to the scene to deal with it. As you can see from this, engineers and technicians will be the most sought-after positions in the factory of the future. But what about those workers?
Do black-lit factories cause workers to be laid off?
Layoffs are inevitable. Human beings have always tried their best to improve production technology, because as long as production technology improves, productivity will also follow. However, before the advent of the black light factory, the machine was responsible for processing the product, and the workers were responsible for operating the machine, no matter how the production technology progressed, it was inseparable from the workers. But in the current black-light factory model, most of the jobs can completely replace workers.
As workers, we also fantasized that there would be advanced technology in the future to reduce our work burden, but we did not expect that when this kind of technology appeared, we would lose the opportunity to work! Just as the manufacturers think, black light factories do not need a large amount of labor, but need professional and technical engineers, but looking at the whole society, is there more engineers or ordinary people? Does the state vigorously promote black light factories take into account the problem of laid-off workers?
In fact, with the development and progress of technology, the laid-off turmoil is inevitable, to be precise, it has already happened, and not only on the factory assembly line, but even some creative jobs have been replaced by artificial intelligence. Although this is very cruel, but the reality is like this, because the machine to replace human work is a scientific law, but also the necessity of national development, if other countries have entered the era of automated production, and we are still in the era of manual production, then how can our national strength be improved. Wasn't our country bullied by the great powers because its productive forces were inferior to others? Could it be that today, when we can turn ourselves around by technology, will we still stagnate because we are afraid of the storm of layoffs? Of course not!
However, technology replaces people, not only to improve national strength, so that we have face in the world, but so that we can maintain production even if there is no labor, such as the epidemic, in order to control the spread of the disease, the people of the whole country are very conscious of self-isolation, at this time the factory is suspended, but we have to consume items every day, masks, cotton swabs, food, plastic tapes, thermometers......
If it wasn't for the fact that some factories were still holding on, how would we have these items to hold out until victory? We don't know if there will be the next pandemic era, but we have to prepare.
In addition, the decline in population has also forced us to develop unmanned chemical plants. Although we now have a population of 1.4 billion, judging from the social situation in recent years, the willingness of young people to marry and have children has decreased a lot, and the death of the elderly without new babies will inevitably lead to a decrease in the number of people, and correspondingly, the country's labor force will also decline.
This is not alarmist, as can be seen from the fact that the number of kindergarten students has been decreasing in recent years, so we need unmanned factories to make up for the lack of labor.
Although I know that this is the trend of the times, many people are always unwilling, do they really care about those who are facing layoffs?
What about the laid-off?
You must know that it is not only China that is facing the problem of layoffs, such as the United States, which has long caused various social problems because of layoffs, and the farce we see on the news is nothing more than the contradiction caused by people's inability to find jobs and insufficient income. But compared to them, we are much more relaxed in the face of this problem, at least it will not turn society upside down.
But fortunately, in the mainland, although many private manufacturers want to develop unmanned chemical plants, they want to replace 100% of workers, but they can't do it yet. Because there are always some links on the assembly line that must rely on the dexterous hands of workers to complete, even if there is advanced technology, manufacturers will give up the use of automation equipment because of the huge cost, and insist on using workers.
Of course, some large factories that can affect the country's productivity must develop unmanned factories, otherwise once the unexpected comes, we simply do not have enough materials to support the consumption of the people. And today's social demand is so large, if only artificial production is relied on, how can it supply the huge market demand?
In addition, there are many professions in society that cannot be completed by machines, such as doctors, teachers, sales, etc., because these jobs must be completed by humans. So in the era of rapid development of automation, what we have to do is to keep up with the pace of the times, continue to learn some new skills, as much as possible to engage in some work that only people can do, we can't change society, but we can change ourselves!
Some people may say that many people are too old to learn new things like young people. But the reality is that although we live in a civilized society, we are constantly competing with machines.
We are often afraid that the technology is too advanced and will replace human beings for society, but when we think back to the previous industrial revolutions, such things did not happen, on the contrary, because of the emergence of the steam engine, we have a variety of occupations such as car drivers, train drivers, engineers, etc., and because of the emergence of electricity, we have electricians, electrical engineers, winding workers and other professions.
So in the future, why won't we have other occupations? And after not engaging in repetitive manual work, human beings will have enough time to do what they want to do, isn't this the benefit brought by technology? So technology always has two sides, on the one hand, we have a laid-off crisis, but on the other hand, it prompts us to constantly improve ourselves.
Factories can produce without workers! Will the arrival of black-light factories cause a storm of layoffs?