Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/390433
48 SMT Magazine • October 2014 RA: What about the risks and challenges when a decision has been finalized to auto- mate certain assembly processes? JD: One of the big challenges in terms of automation is automating processes that aren't mature. Anyone who's had an experience in automation knows that the best thing to do is to find a process, get it mature, and then apply automation to it. But what we're seeing today is that they're trying to automate processes that are relatively immature. RA: From a production standpoint, how does automation benefit the company? JD: Clearly, when we put a piece of automa- tion, we expect the quality and consistency and yield to improve. We have tremendous opera- tors at Jabil that are doing the process manu- ally. It brings a level of variability that, to some degree, is not completely controllable. But with such automation like robots, you can be sure that every robot is going to perform a task with the same level of precision and quality. The second aspect, certainly in applications where you have a degree of precision required, the productivity out of a robot cell is higher than it is out of a manual station. The output we get per square foot factory space is higher. Certainly there's benefit from a labor stand- point, in terms of cost in labor. Now, it's not easy to hire anymore. The younger generation doesn't want to work in factories; they want to go into white-collar jobs. The availabil- ity of labor, based on demographic trends, is going to force more and more into automation. Those are the kind of near-term things that we are looking at. The longer term value proposition of automation and beyond those spe- cific benefits is that because every automated station is a computer station. With sensing technology and capabilities we can build in an automated station, we will have a level of process control and moni- toring that are difficult to get with manual stations. The real opportunity over the long term is leveraging the data side of auto- mation to really improve the productivity and processes in our manufacturing. RA: Do you think automation in the manu- facturing industry can bring back electronics manufacturing to the United States? JD: I think there's no way for manufacturing to come back to the United States without au- tomation. If you look at the cost of labor in the U.S. versus the cost of labor in China or Viet- nam, it gets pretty obvious. Our largest factory in China has 60,000 people. Foxconn has got five or six times more. There's nowhere in the United States you can put up a factory like that. Beyond the labor savings aspect of it, if we can do manufacturing processes that don't re- quire that scale of labor, then we will be able to reshore. For me, I think the only way that we can have significant reshoring activity is by develop- ing manufacturing processes that include a high degree of automation so that we can put factories in places in the United States where you can actu- ally hire enough labor to support those tasks. For the challenges, over the past three de- cades, there's really a lack of emphasis by all of the education institutions and organizations to really turn out high-caliber manufacturing em- ployees in the United States. We used to have a tremendous tool and die capability; but over the last few decades, most of that capability is FLeXibLe manuFacturing continues ArTiCLE