In an age of automation, factories once primarily powered by human productive power are increasingly required to move toward utilizing robots.
In a countryside township near Taichung City surrounded by rice paddies, the operator of a plastic casings manufacturing plant with annual revenues in the billions of New Taiwan dollars foresaw this trend a decade ago. In the past 10 years, he has kept manpower levels constant, but has seen revenues increase eightfold. Most of his orders come from top of the line brand names.
This manager, who requested anonymity due his company’s involvement in the production line for parts of a leading smartphone, reveals the most critical discovery of his past 10 years of work: in order to move toward Industry 4.0 the greatest challenges were not technological hurdles, but more personal ones.
To increase automated production, he needed to revamp the entire production line process. Each spare part must have a designated number that machines can recognize for processing. During the implementation of these potentially disruptive changes, he needed to maintain resolve in the face of clients canceling orders and the complaints of employees.
At the same time, he has had to convince experienced mechanics to put aside their fears of being made obsolete and laid off in order for them to impart their knowledge to machines allowing them to be more precise in their operations. Succeeding in this human-robotic knowledge transfer required great amounts of trust.
Thriving and surviving
“We made the decision to move toward automation ten years ago because we realized that manpower costs would continue to rise. Even in Asia, you can’t just fire someone at will, which means automation becomes the way in easing the pressure of rising costs.
In the past few years, I’ve become aware how important attitude is. The basic principle behind Industry 4.0 is automation, yet automation requires a lot of minute details, such as providing each and every single spare part with its corresponding serial number. That attention to detail remains despite the investment you’ve made into equipment. Initially, our system of operation needed to undergo extensive changes.
“Our company produces smartphone cases, and the most important aspect of that is the case molding. Each case mold has at least 400 separate parts and in the process of creating and assembling one involves more than 3,000 separate processes. So, one must first standardize the steps in order to have the chance of creating an automated production process.
“The entire process is very arduous. For example, with the mold that consists of 400 separate parts, in order to make everything automated you need to provide a part number for each of them. It sounds easy, but the actual task is not. First, it requires creating a case file, then a discussion of its production process. It’s not even immediately clear how long that process will take. A lot of owners prefer to make money first rather than invest the effort in standardizing. So this is also a test of a leader’s patience. No matter how painful the process is, the leader must bear it in order to proceed further.”
Costs of transformation
According to the businessman, if in the past when molds were made and there was a slight discrepancy in the measurements, the client would just call and send for the mechanic. “The mechanic would take a file and pair everything down quickly to the right size. This satisfied the client that requires speed, because to them, speed is everything. But this is working on an ad hoc basis—one will never find the design flaw and thus, automation cannot be implemented.
“I prohibited filing. Anyone caught filing I reprimand or fire. I want them to redesign it and the process can take two days. Some clients can’t wait that long and threaten me by saying that if I don’t speed things up, they’ll stop doing business with me. So I tell them, ‘sorry, I’d rather not take this order if it means finding out the source of the problem.’ Because of this insistence, we have certainly lost a few orders.
“There is a principle behind transformation, and the important part is giving employees confidence. In the past when I brought up a paperless workflow, involving all digitized blueprints, our employees immediately said: ‘Boss that’s impossible.’ They thought such a proposal was unfathomable. Afterwards I bought the computers and the software and started working with them on the process. From then they found out it was indeed possible. In the past, a drawing of a mold casing took more than 10 days and was later reduced to three. Now, it takes six hours.
“Now when I offer a vision, they won’t say it’s impossible. Rather, they will start thinking of ways in bringing it about. This shift in attitude took about five years to achieve.”
Building trust
Of course, if one wants employees to take part in transformation, one needs incentives, the businessman said. “The financial crisis was a time in which the company accelerated its efforts of automation. While everyone else was cutting wages, I decided to go against the flow by increasing salaries by a range of 20 percent to 30 percent. At the time, some members of the management were opposed to such moves. ‘Everyone else is cutting costs, and here you are increasing salaries?’ And I said I wanted big increases so that they are perceptible.
“At the time, I firmly believed that the company needed to move quickly in moving toward automation and changing its overall structure. So, I made this decision in order to provide people a sense of security so that they would be willing to take part in it. Our wages should be the highest in the manufacturing area of central Taiwan. We even sent a bunch of employees to FANUC Robotics in Japan to increase their knowledge of equipment manufacturing. Our employees know that their jobs are secure, I give them high wages, I send them for more training opportunities abroad—they have peace of mind.
“One will encounter internal resistance when moving toward automation. Early on, when a U.S. based completed its equipment for the task of automation, the machines did not function. Someone had sabotaged the equipment. This points to how important trust is between management and employees.
“In the past at case molding plants, preprocessing was important: the precision of a mechanic’s hand control determined the life and death of the whole operation. If he’s in a good mood, he’ll file everything nicely. If he’s not, he may not. A lot of the plants were therefore dependent on the whims of these specialists. After moving toward computerization, preprocessing was largely taken away. I didn’t fire them. I allowed them to participate in the process of product design certification, where the kinks in the design process are identified. They have an uncanny ability to identify problems and they are rewarded in the process.”
These days, the production line is flexible in automation. Yes, the number of employees has not grown, but output has increased from two to five times, the businessman said. “Why are the returns in investment so quick for me? Because I started early. In the beginning very few were doing automation. I charge the same prices as my competitors, but my costs have shrunk since automation—so of course I make more profits relatively speaking and get faster returns.
“I have heard a lot of company heads say they will focus first on essential techniques before moving toward automation—but nothing comes of it. Many companies have the ability, but they rather not invest in the time and costs to pursue automation. Enterprise automation at the end is a matter of basic skills, courage and attitude.
“Clients these days won’t demand that you pursue automation, but don’t forget: In the end, they are apt to choose the producer that is most competitive and flexible manufacturing will become the trend of tomorrow. This is because consumer habits are already changing.” (E)
[By Tseng Ru-ying / tr. by Russ Chiao]