Rumours have it that Adidas committed to move some production back to Germany as a by-product of the negotiations with DFB (German football association) sponsoring. Particularly the jersey of the national team was said to be produced in Germany again, 20 years after outsourcing that whole part of the value chain to Asia. That was about half a year ago, and ignorami like me seriously wondered how that would be possible. Well, like this:
If everything goes according to plan, Adidas can start the series production next year. A second factory is then built in America, the company management announces. Both sites together would produce one million pairs of shoes annually. A small amount – measured by the total volume of around 300 million pairs a year. But it should be the beginning. “In the medium term, we will find such factories in all major sales markets,” announced CEO Herbert Hainer. And he doesn’t conceal the motivation – it’s the logo ‘made in Germany/USA/Australia’ etc. that still signals quality apparently.
Shoes in the robot factory can be manufactured even more cost-effectively than man-made running shoes. Only the staff will differ: While traditionally sewed and patterned shoes in Asian factories require human intervention, the pilot factories in Ansbach and America each require not more than 160 production and maintenance specialists for the robots.
Adidas’ foray fits neatly in the returning trend towards automation. Industry 4.0 penetrates all sectors, also other industries profit. At the Audi factory in Ingolstadt, for example, people and robots are already working side-by-side: in final assembly, a robot gets the necessary components and passes them to the employee.
Then again, we’ve been there before. And actual research shows the limits of automation. Not necessarily in terms of feasibility but efficiency. If we think about the hundreds of millions Google, Tesla, BMW etc. have invested in autonomous driving (which essentially is robotics and still doesn’t work perfectly) and that Adidas in this example even received funding from the German government for its robot factory, the question pops up how long it will take until someone will invest that kind of money for a robot to cut meat (which from an engineering point of view is everything but simple) or to do housework.
Last weekend, I want to buy training & running shoes. I can understand that their types are totally different. I also preferred to buy separated ones. When I saw this shoes, it was cost 800 zloty. Just for a training shoes? it is crazy, Why would I pay for it? Do you know, it cost like 200 zloty even less, when you buy the last season or last year edition…
Replacing people with machines is pretty scary. However, looks like that’s a natural next step in today’s world. Technology is getting more and more advanced. Since always the main goal of production was increasing efficiency. It’s sad, but in simple tasks machines can do better than people.
Sure, this will mean leaving a huge number of people from Africa and Asia without a job. With limited qualifications and perspectives, there’s not much for them to do instead working in factories. Replacing humans with machines will only make the differences between western countries and ‘3rd world’ bigger. But well, let’s face it, corporations won’t do anything about it, they don’t care about ethical aspects of their business, they never did.
So what’s the future for poor countries in Africa and Asia? It’s sad, but I don’t see too much hope there…