Toyota Motor is accelerating factory innovation, including plans to deploy 400,000 humanoid robots across its global production bases. The Japanese automaker will spend 1 trillion yen (about 9 trillion won) to replace production lines with advanced facilities and will progressively install robots at its own plants (150,000 units) and at affiliates (250,000 units). Humanoid robots are currently learning the movements of frontline workers on manufacturing lines. The plan is to raise productivity at 60 plants worldwide by combining skilled workers, robots and an efficient production system.
Toyota's robot deployment is a desperate struggle for survival. Tesla of the United States and China's BYD earlier announced their own robot adoption blueprints. Underlying all of them is a sense of crisis shared by both management and labor that complacency without innovation means collective ruin. Tesla began building a production line in July for more than 50,000 Optimus robots a year at a U.S. plant, and plans to gradually expand deployment to gigafactories worldwide. BYD is speeding toward commercialization, testing robots in transport, labeling and inspection work. Germany's BMW has also begun introducing humanoid robots to its production lines.
In contrast to the swift moves by global companies, the Hyundai Motor union is running against the tide of the times. It is refusing to accept robots, insisting that "not a single robot can be deployed without agreement between labor and management." It is backed by the so-called yellow envelope law, the revised Trade Union Act, which stipulates that changes in working conditions are subject to bargaining and industrial action. Hyundai Motor plans to establish mass production of 30,000 Atlas robots in the United States by next year and to deploy them in stages at global manufacturing sites, but the possibility cannot be ruled out that the union will obstruct even this.
Success or failure in advanced industries depends on speed. If union obstruction combines with policy misjudgment by the government, Korea will fall behind in the global competitive race and national competitiveness will collapse in an instant. The union's self-interest and recklessness could bring on the very job losses it fears. How could Korea possibly withstand the high-speed advance of Chinese companies that have both innovative technology and price competitiveness? As President Lee Jae-myung noted in stressing coexistence with robots, saying "you cannot avoid the great cart," the union must change its thinking. The ruling party and the government, too, must abandon the futile, reckless resistance of a David trying to stop a moving train and start by overhauling the yellow envelope law.
