Chinese Factory Replaces 90% Of Human Workers With Robots, Sees 250% Production Increase

One of China’s first unmanned factories in the city of Dongguan recently replaced 590 of its workers with robots and the results were astounding. While the factory used to be run by 650 employees, only 60 of those people still work at the factory and their primary job is to make sure the machines are running properly, not working on manufacturing.

The Changying Precision Technology Company focuses on the production of mobile phones and uses automated production lines. The robotic arms produce certain parts of the mobile phones at each station and the factory even makes use of autonomous transport trucks.

Though 60 is a shocking amount of people to be running and monitoring a whole factory, the trial for the robots is going so well that the general manager, Luo Weiqiang, said that the number of human employees may even drop to 20 someday.

Since the shift to robots, pieces per person per month has risen from 8,000 to 21,000—a whopping 250% increase. While some may argue that quality of the product will decrease with the use of robots, this doesn’t appear to be the case either. The number of product defects has decreased from 25% to just 5%.