Tag Archive for Detroit

| August 23, 2011
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Foxconn Replacing 1 Million Humans with Robots

Foxconn Replacing 1 Million Humans with RobotsI recently noted from the Bach Seat that the manufacturer of all things digital, Foxconn was moving production to Brazil from China because of rampant wage inflation. Now it seems that the Taiwanese technology giant has decided that to drop people from production altogether. TechEye reports that Terry Gou, founder, and chairman of Foxconn (2038), told Xinhuanet that the firm will replace up to 1 million people with robots over the next three years.

foxconn logoMr. Gou told Xinhuanet that Foxconn now has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years. The manufacturer now has over 1.2 million employees with one million of them based in China.

Mr. Gou told Xinhuanet the robots will replace humans who do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding, and assembling of products for firms such as Apple (AAPL), HP (HPQ), Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), ASUS (2357), Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT), Nintendo (7978) and Sony (SNE).

foxconn workersFoxconn needs to automate more of its manufacturing processes in order to make up for labor shortages and stay ahead of its competitors, said Amy Teng, an analyst with research firm Gartner (IT), told PCWorld.

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Mr. Gou told employees that he wanted to move the company’s workers “higher up the value chain, beyond basic manufacturing work,” according to a company statement cited by PCWorld.

While no one will deny that robots are efficient and they also don’t commit suicide due to harsh working conditions. But as we painfully know here in Detroit, robots create job losses, thus generating unintended consequences throughout the world economy. What could be the unintended consequences of 1 million unemployed Foxconn workers in the Peoples Republic of China?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder should be pushing Foxconn to build its robot factory in DetroitIf political leaders like former Gateway Computers CEO and Michigan Governor Dick Snyder and President Obama were truly interested in creating jobs in Michigan, they would be welcoming this announcement and pushing hard for Foxconn to build its robot factory in Detroit, where land is cheap and skilled robotics technicians cast off by the auto-makers can tend to the Foxconn robots.

iPad4, made in Detroit

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| August 16, 2011
Comments Off on Motown Not so iPad-Friendly

Motown Not so iPad-Friendly

WhiMotown Not so iPad-Friendlyle having a bagel and coffee at a Panera the other morning, I read an article on my iPad (See I’m as pretentious cool as someone in California) from the fount of tech reporting, Men’s Health that Detroit is full of Luddites because there are not enough Best Buys in Michigan. The article made me put down my iPad and picked up my laptop so I could write this blog.

DetroitThe Men’s Health article looked at ad impressions from mobile ad network Chitika, the number of Apple (AAPL) and Best Buy (BBY) stores per capita, and the percentage of households that own tablets, notebooks, or laptops according to Mediamark Research.

David Zinczenko, Rodale EVP and editor in chief of Men’s Health observed in the article that iPad adoption correlates to proximity to a high-tech center, but also education levels, Mr. Zinczenko gets it right when he suggests that consumer iPad adoption is mostly about income levels.

Apple iPads“Let’s look at who was in line when the iPad 2 went on sale: affluent, well-educated people who had $800 bucks to throw around in the middle of a deep recession,” Mr. Zinczenko told Mashable. “It’s not that [college-educated people are] smarter than the people in Toledo, it’s just that they were fortunate enough to have the dough to attend college. As their educations progressed, their choice of leisure interests migrated toward words, narratives and research-driven pastimes,” all of which the iPad accommodates, he argues.

Most iPad-Friendly

1. Plano, TX
2. San Jose, CA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Boise, ID
5. Austin, TX

Least iPad-Friendly

96. Cincinnati, OH
97. Baltimore, MD
98. Detroit, MI
99. Fort Wayne, IN
100. Toledo, OH

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In case you did not notice the article started out as a study on consumer iPad adoption which incorrectly morphed into an overall ranking of tech friendliness. This is just more Detroit bashing by Men’s Health. In the past, they have called Detroit one of “Worst Cities for Men” and “The Angriest City.”

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 11, 2011
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Detroit is Growth Leader in Tech Jobs

Detroit is Growth Leader in Tech JobsMost of the things I read in the Bach Seat about Detroit are negative at best, so good news about jobs in Detroit is always welcome. Detroit has seen a 66% growth in tech jobs which BussinessWeek says second-best in the U.S., behind Cleveland.

The article says that Detroit employers are looking for technology workers as automakers create cars with increasingly sophisticated Internet services (a trend I wrote about here) and lithium-ion batteries. Skills needed in Motor City are project management and experience with Oracle software. The tech top employers in Motown are Computer Sciences and General Electric.

Cities with tech job growth

Detroit3. Cincinnati

4. Jacksonville, FL

5. Salt Lake City

6. Richmond, VA

7. Miami

8. Tampa

9. Portland, OR

10. Pittsburgh

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I have hired a couple more techs to coordinate and am looking to hire a couple more, so maybe BuseinessWeek is right.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| June 18, 2011
Comments Off on GM to Build New Data Center in Michigan

GM to Build New Data Center in Michigan

GM to Build New Data Center in MichiganDetroit Michigan based automaker General Motors (GM) will invest $130 million to build an enterprise data center at the GM Technical Center, in Warren, MI reports Data Center Knowledge. According to the article the new data center, the Information Technology Operations and Command Center, will allow GM to cut operating costs. The savings will come from consolidating GM global IT infrastructure into a more efficient facility.

GM said it will renovate and expand the former Cadillac administrative building on its Warren Tech Center campus. Design is underway on the renovation and construction, with the last phase scheduled for completion in 2015. The project is expected to create 25 high-tech jobs. InformationWeek says the state-of-the-art center will allow GM to merge tech operations spread across many sites into a single facility, reduce IT operating costs, and cut energy consumption by 40%. The company expects the data center to meet requirements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S Green Building Council.

Michigan to be center of GM IT

DCK reports the new enterprise data center will use a “modular design” to allow for future expansion. Data Center Modular designs often use factory-built structures, but the term is increasingly being used to describe phased build-outs using pods of raised-floor space. The facility will contain IT laboratories to run computer simulations for vehicle designs. It will also serve as a hub for monitoring GM’s digital applications globally. “The Enterprise Data Center will contain technology laboratories and a global information technology operations center that will serve as the hub for monitoring General Motors information technology applications around the world,” GM Vice President and chief information officer Terry Kline told reporters.

GM Enterprise Data Center at Warren tech Center

New GM Enterprise Data Center at Warren Tech Center

“This new facility and other GM data centers around the world support the tools the company needs to design, build and sell the world’s best vehicles through digital applications enabling all business functions,” said Mr. Kline. “This investment is possible because of the cooperation between GM, the Warren community, and the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA). We think the result is a win for everybody involved.”

The automaker received a tax credit from MEGA to support the $130 million redevelopment of the computer center. The Warren city council unanimously approved a brownfield redevelopment plan for space at the sprawling Technical Center campus.

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A few years back,  I worked for about 18 months at the Tech Center, at the Vehicle Engineering Center (VEC). The best part of the job was going over to the Cadillac building for lunch. I recall the cafeteria having leather walls and real china with the Cadillac logo.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 20, 2011
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GM Saves Energy Through Smart IT

Andrew Winston at the Harvard Business Review writes that opportunities for improving energy efficiency and saving real money are everywhere. The proverbial low-hanging fruit are actually, in the words of energy guru Amory Lovins, fruit on the ground. GM (GM) recently announced a new way to find easy pickings, a shockingly straightforward change in how it runs its manufacturing plants. The Detroit-based auto giant is saving $3 million annually in energy costs across 10 plants by shutting down equipment when it’s not needed.

General MotorsMr. Winston says the man in charge of the program is Mike Durak, the Global Program Manager, IT. According to the article, GM is using General Electric (GE) Proficy Software to automate the shutdown and restart of its equipment. It started simply enough, GM set the lighting in one plant to synch up with the conveyor. When the manufacturing line stopped, for breaks or between shifts, the lighting would shut off. Seeing the quick payback, the managers added all energy-using systems to this automated network, from heating and cooling systems to pumps and compressed air units. The investment in connecting an entire plant is paying back through energy savings alone in just 6 months.

HBR says that previously GM shutdowns equipment multiple times a day with a combination of manual shutdowns and unconnected, or “dumb”, automation. Basically, energy use would gradually ramp down after production stopped as equipment was shut off, and then it would ramp back up before the next shift. “Energy use was in a ‘V-shape’,” Mr. Durak said, “and now it’s more like a U.” (The author says, the difference between a V-shape and a U-shape is what’s saved).

EnergyMr. Winston calls these sudden wins “headslappers” because they’re so obvious…in retrospect. The reasons we miss these easy wins are varied — from inertia to not being incentivized to find them to the classic problem of always addressing what’s urgent (something broken or a new process) over what’s important (getting leaner). Or perhaps a simple, cheap technological fix was not available until recently. In GM’s case, the big change is economically networking a whole range of equipment that wasn’t connected before. So with the new systems in place, managers can use the GE software to monitor and control the plant to a much finer degree.

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Maybe GM is getting smarter; they are figuring out what a “smarter” factory looks like. the Chevy Volt seems to be a “smarter” car.

What do you think?

What is your organization doing to get smarter?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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