New York ¨C If there was ever a good time for the robots-taking-over-jobs argument, this may be it. Not just because factory owners don¡¯t want to pay for rising labor costs, but because workers don¡¯t want to gather every day in petri dishes.
Chinese manufacturing is facing a challenge since employees returned to production lines: keeping them on the job. Some companies reported a 90 percent turnover in workforce after the economy started reopening in March, compared with 25 percent to 30 percent in a normal, pre-coronavirus year.
Such spikes are expected worldwide as lockdowns ease. The pandemic has made ¡°humans the risk to continued operations¡± in supply chains, note analysts from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Leave aside how businesses reopen. The bigger question is, how will they be thinking about the future of their factories?
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