The Rise of the Robots – A Maintenance Nightmare
How many reports have you read in the past few months, calling for more automation in Chinese factories, in response to raising labor cost?
Reading specialized magazines, you may be tempted to think that automation will save China by preventing all MNCs from moving to the cheaper Vietnam. There is recurrent talk about “smart plants”, often for the purpose of “replacing people”. Perhaps the most remarkable of all claims has been Foxconn announcement that they will install 1 million robots in their Chinese assembly plants in the next 3 years.
Assuming that this is more than just corporate communication, there are serious downsides to increased automation in the specific context of China, specifically when to comes to labor and labor cost. What many present as a “silver bullet” for HR problems may turn out to be the worst HR nightmare for manufacturers…
Here is the practical point-of-view of someone who has worked in the Chinese maintenance market since 1997.
The Chinese maintenance market differs widely from that of the “West”. When it comes to people, it is characterized by a lack of understanding of methodologies (fancy acronyms like “TPM” or “RCM” may be known, but often not their true meaning, even less the practices behind). Chinese engineers are generally too specialized and lack the multidisciplinary skills so crucial to manage maintenance: a basic knowledge of mechanics, electricity, automation and perhaps an overall business view to understand the impact that maintenance has on the operations.
Staff turnover is often listed as an issue, especially with regards to skilled personnel and management staff (including expatriate managers on assignment for 2-3 years only). Good maintenance managers and planners are particularly difficult to find, I would even say “impossible to find” – if they are good, they are already managing entire plants!
This HR situation has a major impact on all aspects of the maintenance discipline – starting with fault diagnosis (hard to find a technician who can perform proper root cause analysis). Outsourcing is sometimes presented as a solution to this problem, which reflects a misunderstanding of the underlying problems: service providers face exactly the same HR problem as plant owners; they usually find it even harder to attract or retain people, lacking the brand name recognition of major industrial groups.
In this context, more complex highly automated plants become even more reliant on skilled personnel… The million robots will require careful installation (this is where problems usually start), accurate technical documentation (another key issue), well structured preventive maintenance programs with methods in place to ensure their execution, their optimization over time as equipment ages… Failing this, the reliability will quickly become an issue, with huge impact on the business.
This article was originally published on SCMTimes.com in October 2011.
