Thursday, January 26, 2012
By Pawan Rana
Car industry automation triggered job loss looms large
Innovations and automation in car industry will continue to be a boon as well bane. Boon for the car makers and a loss for the workers and there will be a fear of their replacement with automated machines. The number of robots is expected to have multiplied 10-fold in the recent years. Hyundai has over 300 robots and 8,500 workers working everyday producing 60,000 cars a year. Similar is the story of a majority of car makers in India and across the globe.
The man machine balance is increasingly swinging on the robots side and the number of lay off is increasing day by day. Reason: faster production and lesser hassles. Carmakers such as Maruti, Hyundai and Honda have reportedly decided to increase automation at their plants and thus a cut in the number of workers looms large.
Chennai to Chakan, Manesar, Gurgaon and Sanand which are said to be the hub of most of the car production units in India are heading towards serious automation. As per an estimate, Honda has tripled its automation from 20% to 55% and thus has stepped up Honda car production capacity from 30k cars per year to 120k. Maruti’s second plant at Manesar is said to be far more automated than Gurgaon facility. Similarly Ford has introduced 90 robots to step up production of Ford Figo.
