With the in-depth application of Industry 4.0 and the full implementation of China Zhizao 2025 plan, more and more enterprises begin to try to build unmanned factories. It can be predicted that in the near future, unmanned factories will become a new lean production mode, sweeping all production enterprises.

I. What is an unmanned factory?

An unmanned factory is literally a factory where no one participates. Relevant data define it as follows: "Unmanned factory, also called automatic factory and fully automatic factory, refers to a factory where all production activities are controlled by electronic computers and the first line of production is equipped with robots without workers."

Second, the advantages of unmanned factories

More and more enterprises try unmanned factories, not because it looks cool. In fact, the advantage of unmanned factory is its attraction.

1. Save manpower

Since it is called an unmanned factory, it is definitely its greatest advantage to have no one or reduce people's participation in the production process. People have high initiative and creativity in production. But in contrast, people also have high instability and limitations. In manufacturing industry, especially in assembly line production, the demand for people's initiative and creativity is greatly reduced, and the problems of human instability (such as error-prone) and limitations (such as labor efficiency) are more prominent. At this time, using machines is undoubtedly more advantageous. In addition, with the development of society, workers are increasingly disgusted with monotonous and labor-intensive work, and the number of related employees is difficult to guarantee, and there are still problems such as low efficiency and high cost in manpower. The emergence of unmanned factories reduces the dependence of production on manpower, enterprises can solve the employment problem, and some workers can also be freed from more dangerous and heavy work.

2. Improve quality, increase efficiency and reduce cost.

Compared with traditional factories, unmanned factories have obvious effects of improving quality, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. An enterprise is an enterprise that tried to build an unmanned factory earlier. Considering the cost and risk, it first tried "robot substitution" and tried to replace the workers engaged in polishing operations in the production of metal precision components with polishing robots. Before using robots for production, all kinds of expenses that need to be spent on an experienced polishing master need 10,000 yuan per month. With the participation of robots, the efficiency is 2.5 times of the original, and the product qualification rate is higher. According to the company's output value, it only takes one year to return to the original. That is to say, in the production one year later, the original labor costs will be converted into enterprise profits, which will undoubtedly make enterprises have more competitiveness in similar products.

Third, the impact of unmanned factories

The impact of the use of unmanned factories is comprehensive and far-reaching, which can be roughly divided into the following three aspects.   

1. For workers. The use of unmanned factories will undoubtedly have an impact on individual workers and the social labor structure. For individuals, those engaged in related industries may face unemployment due to the emergence of unmanned factories, such as workers engaged in traditional loading and unloading, loading and unloading, polishing and other jobs. For the whole labor market, it is necessary to adjust the labor structure to meet the needs of unmanned factories.

Although the emergence of unmanned factories has caused some jobs to be no longer undertaken by manpower, it does not mean that these workers will face unemployment. Ma Yun once said that the mission of robots should be to help human beings do things that human beings can't do, not to replace human beings. Similarly, unmanned factories do not replace workers, but liberate these workers from their original jobs and do other more creative things.

2. For enterprises. The use of unmanned factories has undoubtedly greatly improved the production efficiency and quality of enterprises. In addition to the advantages of improving quality and increasing efficiency, enterprises should also pay attention to the risks and challenges existing in unmanned factories. If the number of people in unmanned factories is greatly reduced, how should these people be resettled and how should enterprise management adapt to the new model? Another example is how enterprises can maintain their competitive advantage among their peers when unmanned factories are popularized. There is also how to balance the high upfront cost of unmanned factories. What if the production scale is small and it is difficult to adapt to this model? These problems need to be considered and solved by enterprises.

3. For the industry. If the number of enterprises using unmanned factories in a certain industry increases, the socially necessary labor time and social productivity of this industry will inevitably change. Enterprises that can adapt to the whole industry will stay, and enterprises that cannot change will face elimination. The pattern of the whole industry will also change accordingly. For example, small production enterprises and low-end production enterprises are more likely to be eliminated. It is also worth thinking about how the whole industry can enter a benign development mode in this situation.