Japan builds factory with no workers

Press, 19 November 1981, Page 9

Japan builds factory with no workers

From

PETER HAZELHURST

of “The Times” (through NZPA) London Hundreds of European and American businessmen, confronted by labour disputes at home, are now flocking to the. small town of Oguchi to inspect and snap' up Japan’s latest export product: completely automated factories which can churn out manufactured industrial goods without the aid of human workers. “We have so many inquiries we cannot handle all the business. At the moment we have a big American delegation, including representatives of General Electric, General Motors, Westinghouse, and Lockheed, inspecting our factory,” said Tsnehiko Yamazaki, the managing director of the Yamazaki machine-tool factory, a plant which continues to manufacture industrial goods throughout the night without a worker on the premises. The plant, which is equipped with robots, numerically controlled machine tools, an automated production line, and six computers, manufactures machine tools and industrial lathes. A conventional factory would have to be manned by

250 workers every shift. “We need six men on the first shift and another six technicians and workers man the plant during the next shift. In all 12 men, including four computer technicians. “But at midnight they go home to sleep while the factory continues to operate without a person on the premises for the next eight hours,” Toriako Ito, the company’s chief marketing manager, said. Mr Yamazaki says he can provide foreign industrialists with an unmanned factory for about S2O million. “We have had many inquiries from Britain and other parts of Europe. A large delegation of European representatives are coming to inspect our plant next month but we are too busy dealing with the American market at the moment.” He said the American trade unions will soon have to grapple with the unnerving task of dealing with the advent of unmanned factories. “We have already exported and shipped a version of our unmanned factory to the Cincinnati Corporation in Ohio,” he said. The staff expects orders for unmanned factories to pour in after a delegation of 110 of the Yamazaki company’s European representa-

tives and other machine-tool manufacturers visit the plant next month. The delegation includes businessmen from Britain, West Germany, Austria. Switzerland, Italy, and Belgium. American factory owners who have inspected the plant were astounded by , the sophisticated production line. “If something goes wrong at night the computers instruct the robots to repair the defect. If the robot is incapable of correcting the fault, the computer will shut down the line,” a technician said. "We told our American clients that we decided to build these unmanned factories when we faced skyrocketing inflation after the oil shock. We knew we had to increase our productivity if we were to survive,” Mr Yamazaki said. He admits that many of his American clients have expressed fears that some of the United State’s powerful unions will oppose Japan’s plans to export unmanned factories to the West. “Some American businessmen have brought union leaders over here to discuss the matter. In Japan we have a tradition of life-long employment. But we can absorb workers in other parts of business when new technology is introduced because productivity is high.”