The Taiwanese manufacturing company behind Apple's iPhone, Foxconn, plans to build an $8.8 billion liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) factory in China. The general manager of Foxconn's automation committee, Dai Jia-peng, claims that the company has a three-phase plan in place to automate its Chinese factories by utilizing software and in-house robotic units, also known as Foxbots.

The first phase of Foxconn's automation plans will replace the work that involves repetitious labor that workers are unwilling to do. The second phase of the plan involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to cut off the number of excess robots in use. The final phase of Foxconn's automation plans involves automating entire factories, which means there will only a minimal number of workers assigned for logistics, testing, inspection processes and production, according to DigiTimes.

In the long term, robots are cheaper compared to human labor. But, the initial investment of Foxconn's automation plans can be costly.

Nevertheless, complicating Foxconn's automation plans is the Chinese government, which has incentivized the human employment in China. In areas like Shenzhen, Zhengzhou and Chengdu, local governments have allocated billions of dollars in energy contracts, public infrastructure and bonuses to Foxconn to allow the manufacturing company to expand.

Wherein, Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, which is a government incentivized, is the largest and most capable plant that manufactures about 500,000 iPhones a day, and is known locally as the iPhone City. In spite of that, Jia-peng stated that Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory had some production lines already at the second automation phase and soon to become fully automated, The New York Times reported.

That being the case, Foxconn president Terry Gou said in an interview that China has a government that knows how to support new technology. Nonetheless, Gou added that he can't confirm if they will invest in the U.S. in the future, according to Phys Org.

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