Boston Consulting on how to avoid unemployment cau

Boston Consulting: how to avoid unemployment caused by robots

from the current situation, the overall de capacity work in the country is not progressing smoothly, and the main problem is the lack of cooperation of local governments. A large number of state-owned enterprises in the field of overcapacity and the problem of labor transfer and resettlement brought about by the de capacity have aggravated the difficulty of implementing the de capacity policy

China and even the world economy are groping in anxiety and imagination. The anxiety comes from the continuous decline of economic data, the loss of momentum for growth and the intensification of social contradictions. Supply side reform and the new industrial revolution have become the new economic driving engine that the government has high hopes for

from the production lines that need to be shut down in traditional pillar industries such as coal and steel, to the southeast coastal cities of China where traditional manufacturing industries such as Dongguan in Guangdong and Kunshan in Jiangsu flourished for a while, taking tens of thousands of artificial robots, changes are taking place behind the forced layoffs of a large number of employees

on June 27, the 2016 new leaders' annual meeting on the test method of bending modulus in plastic testing machine with the theme of the fourth industrial revolution: the power of transformation was opened in Tianjin. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at the annual meeting that to promote the stable recovery of the world economy, we need to actively implement structural reform and solve the deep-seated contradictions and problems of the world economy. We should not only strengthen demand management, but also strive to promote structural reform to eliminate the focus

structural reform, in fact, is also to promote the transformation of old and new driving forces. Li Keqiang proposed that we should take advantage of the historic opportunities provided by the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution in the world to effectively promote the growth of the new economy and the transformation of traditional industries. All parties should take advantage of the situation and focus on the transformation and upgrading of policies

China's economic reform does not lack direction, but practical and effective operation methods. Local governments and enterprises all agree with the importance of reducing production capacity and hope to move towards industry 4.0, but there are many problems in the process. Local governments and enterprises lack substantial impetus to reduce production capacity and wait and see each other. However, the intelligent manufacturing field, which can enjoy preferential policies such as policy subsidies, has rushed into mass action, forming an embarrassing situation of industry hollow, low-end technology and excess investment

at the summer Davos forum, the interface interviewed Zhou Yuan, partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Boston Consulting is one of the top three American management consulting companies in the world. Zhou Yuan has studied in the field of industrial structure reform and urbanization for more than ten years, and has maintained a first-line observation on the industry 4.0 industry

Zhou Yuan believes that in order to achieve the expectation of capacity reduction, we must weaken the assessment indicators of local government GDP, strengthen the quantitative assessment of capacity reduction indicators, and provide a certain degree of central financial transfer support to regions with greater capacity reduction efforts. In view of the placement of laid-off workers, she suggested that we should learn from the practices of developed countries such as Germany and explore new employment opportunities in services and other industries with stronger absorption capacity

industry 4.0 will certainly bring changes and impacts to China's labor structure. Zhou Yuan said that the government, enterprises and workers themselves need to make preparations as soon as possible. The government needs to actively carry out appropriate guidance and policy support, while educational institutions need to reform to meet market demand, and assist the traditional front-line staff to obtain necessary training and transition to new positions, or divert to the relevant service industry fields required by the society

what observations and operational suggestions does this senior researcher from a world-renowned management consulting company have for China's industrial restructuring and intelligent manufacturing industry transformation? The following is part of the dialogue between the interface and Zhou Yuan

interface: China is currently undergoing industrial restructuring. For industries with overcapacity, the government is vigorously implementing supply side reform and emphasizing capacity reduction, but due to the interests of all parties involved, it has encountered many difficulties in the process of promotion. Can you talk about your observations on the current capacity removal work in China, such as the characteristics and trends, as well as your views

Zhou Yuan: first of all, supply side reform cannot be simply understood as capacity reduction. Supply side reform is a series of structural reforms to improve the quality of economic development, including industrial structure adjustment (technological innovation), administrative management mode upgrading (reduction of government and decentralization), enterprise management mechanism reform (state-owned enterprise reform), and tax system optimization. For this reason, both policymakers and observers cannot examine a single means and its impact in isolation when thinking about supply side reform

judging from the current situation, the overall de capacity work in the country is not progressing smoothly, and the main problem lies in the lack of cooperation of local governments

a large number of state-owned enterprises in the field of overcapacity and the problem of labor transfer and resettlement after overcapacity reduction have aggravated the difficulty of implementing the policy of overcapacity reduction. There are three reasons why local governments are not active in reducing production capacity: first, drag down GDP and affect the performance evaluation of local governments; Second, impact on local employment and social stability; Third, reduce taxes and affect local financial resources. This has given local governments sufficient incentive not to reduce production capacity, but to subsidize these enterprises that should have been shut down. This requires the central government to further strengthen the continuity and strength of the capacity reduction policy

first of all, we should weaken the assessment indicators of GDP and strengthen the quantitative assessment of de capacity indicators; Secondly, the central government should give a certain degree of financial transfer support to regions with greater efforts to reduce production capacity; Third, special resettlement should be carried out for laid-off workers to open up new employment opportunities in services and other industries with stronger absorptive capacity. This is also the previous practice of Germany and other developed countries in coping with the downward trend of the steel and coal industry, which is feasible in hindsight

interface: another key content of industrial structure adjustment is the rise of emerging industries, such as intelligent manufacturing. China has proposed made in China 2025, and a more widely known concept in the world is German industry 4.0. Chinese enterprises, especially manufacturing enterprises, hope to move towards industry 4.0. So, what impact will industry 4.0 have on China's labor force demographic structure? Is it possible that there will be widespread unemployment

Zhou Yuan: industry 4.0 will certainly bring changes and impacts to China's labor structure. The demand for some types of jobs will be reduced, such as general workers, general workers, assemblers, porters, etc. these jobs are easy to be replaced by robots, so they will disappear faster; On the other hand, the demand for some types of work will increase, such as software development, data engineering, mechanical and electrical engineers, and some new types of work will appear, such as robot coordinator

every technological and industrial revolution will bring about the adjustment of labor structure, which is also an inevitable process of optimizing labor allocation, and there is no need to worry too much. Just as when cars appeared, some people once worried that it would cause a large number of unemployment of cabbies and social unrest. Similarly, we don't have to worry that industry 4.0 will bring large-scale unemployment, because some enterprises have not even reached industry 3.0, or even 2.0

but the general trend is established, so the government, enterprises and workers themselves need to make preparations as soon as possible. The government needs to actively carry out appropriate guidance and policy support, while educational institutions need to reform to assist the traditional front-line staff to obtain the necessary training and transition to new positions, or divert to the relevant service industry fields required by the society

interface: how to reform educational institutions

Zhou Yuan: China's technical schools are obviously divorced from the job needs of enterprises, and many people trained are useless. The experience of Germany is worth learning from. Through technical schools, enterprises and education are closely linked, and they are trained according to the needs of the future. During the study period, there are a lot of opportunities and time to practice in enterprises

interface: industry 4.0 emphasizes industrial digitalization, automation and intelligence, in which big data, software systems and platforms play a decisive role. If you want to realize industry 4.0, do you have to start with software? Is software a more core competitive factor than hardware? Should Chinese traditional manufacturing enterprises, like Siemens and Ge, independently develop software system platforms instead of directly using their products? What do you suggest

Zhou Yuan: the core concept of industry 4.0 is integration, automation and optimization of production, which need important support from software. We cannot say that software is more important than hardware, or is a more important core competitive factor. After all, hardware and software are inseparable. However, for China's manufacturing industry, the software sector in the industrial sector is undoubtedly a significant technological gap between China and the world's advanced manufacturing countries, and it is also a sector in urgent need of improvement. Especially for Industry 4.0, it is not only necessary to realize interconnection on the factory production line, but also to interconnect with the consumption world, auxiliary service power system, logistics distribution and distribution system. At this time, the interconnection ability of software will be more demanding, which is a key challenge for our software development ability, especially the development ability of software engineering. When the test ends or the user forcibly interrupts, we will exit

China's existing software development ability is not weak, and it has been in the forefront of the world in many fields. However, in addition to the requirements for software programming ability, the software engineering development of industry 4.0 requires a deep understanding of automation and mechatronics. In China, technical talents in these two aspects are often stripped away. If we let a large number of software developers not only gather in Internet companies, It is an urgent problem to combine with production-oriented enterprises

as for whether to independently develop software system platforms or purchase molded products, it is actually a long-standing debate about whether to make or buy since China's reform and development. In fact, China's development history of more than 30 years has answered this question: buy in the period of lack of technical capacity, and continue to learn and develop in use, and finally realize the transformation from buying and manufacturing to selling

it should be noted that the software system platform is a platform with strong path dependence effect. For example, Siemens' portal, Rockwell AB's Logix, and Br's automationstudio platform all have their own relatively independent standards and development modes. If you buy it for too long, it will easily make enterprises fall into excessive dependence on the platform. Therefore, from the perspective of the government and R & D institutions, it is necessary to start self-development as soon as possible, and build the platform into an open and open source application platform, so as to attract relevant enterprises to carry out R & D Based on China's independent platform as soon as possible, and accelerate the process of manufacturing by buying

interface: Siemens and other industry 4.0 pioneers are looking forward to building themselves into a platform that integrates big data from all walks of life to provide more intelligent services. However, not all enterprises can safely upload their lifeline confidential data to the cloud, and some special industry data also involve state secrets. How should we view the network security boundary? How to prevent? This is related to whether the paint and putty of 6 experimental machine should have enough strength to make industry 4.0 look beautiful, and whether it can finally really