If you have been to Foxconn, you will be amazed by the scale of Foxconn, which is like a small city. For example, the scale of Foxconn in Zhengzhou once exceeded 400,000 people, even exceeding the total population of Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland. For labor-intensive companies like Foxconn, the total number of workers worldwide once exceeded 1.2 million, while for service-intensive companies like Huawei, the total number of workers also exceeded 180,000.
With so many people working together, how to keep everyone on the same page has been a management problem for a century. Therefore, Foxconn carries out semi-military management and has strict work disciplines. For example, you cannot be late for work or leave early. Even the rest time is limited, otherwise you will be punished.
In Foxconn, male and female dormitories must be strictly separated. Smoking, drinking, gambling and other similar activities are not allowed in the dormitory. Except for the prison guards and watchtowers, it looks like a large prison. This has also led many young people to want to escape from this giant factory. Many people came here due to their livelihood, and finally chose to leave after being drained of their passion for life.
How did these factory giants come into being? Why is it so large? Daniel Defoe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe", was amazed by its huge scale when he saw a large factory for the first time. This factory located in Derby, England, has a 5-story building and a huge 7-meter-high waterwheel, which drives more than 20,000 wheels and nearly 100,000 parts. Each revolution of the waterwheel can produce 6 Seventy thousand kilometers of silk thread is more than the total production of a family in more than ten years.
At the beginning of the birth of the giant factory, people did not express disgust, but sincere admiration. However, as the factory developed, people gradually changed from novelty to hatred when faced with the new species they created. The pride before turned into hatred.
The birth of the giant factory was not invented by a group of great scientists as everyone imagined, but was gradually accumulated from a series of insignificant small innovations. For example, the spinning jenny, which had a profound impact on the textile revolution, was originally hand-cranked and suitable for home operation.
In the 18th century, the outsourcing model was born in the British textile industry. That is, powerful businessmen took the lead and provided orders and raw materials to small workshops in families, allowing these small outsourced workshops to complete the production of products. These merchants then distributed the finished products throughout the country.
For more than 100 years after the invention of the spinning jenny, the British textile industry has followed this outsourcing model, and no large factory has emerged. Until one day a mechanic named Arkwright invented a more advanced spinning machine, called the "Arkwright Machine".
At first, Arkwright's spinning machine, like the Jenny spinning machine, was small. However, this small spinning machine was easy to be pirated, so it could not get patent fees. Arkwright then thought of making the machine large enough that only businessmen with sufficient capital could use it and therefore be able to pay expensive patent fees.
The Arkwright spinning machine was built next to a large river and relied on huge water power to drive the machinery. Due to large hydraulic facilities, these plants are usually relatively large. Later, when people used wind power or animal power as a source of power, they still built very large factories.
Capitalists have found that by gathering together, these workers not only work longer hours, but also have more stable product quality, and the efficiency of supervision has also been greatly improved. At one time, factories similar to prisons even appeared. According to the structural characteristics of the prison, a huge watchtower was built in the center of the factory, allowing supervisors to watch over the workers like prisoners.
The factory uses this circular factory construction model to use fewer supervisors and supervise more workers in order to improve the overall labor utilization rate. Early factories did not use the assembly line construction model, and more adopted the small organization cooperation model.
Early textile workers were mainly women and children. Compared with the male labor force, these women and children not only had more dexterous fingers, but also had lower employment costs.
According to statistics, in 1835, the proportion of textile workers under the age of 21 reached 30-50, with the youngest being only 7 years old, and child labor around 10 years old was the most common.
Local officials sent the children in the shelter to factories as apprentices. If these child workers tried to escape, they would be caught back to the factory. Usually these foremen are adult men. They not only supervise these child laborers, but even impose corporal punishment on these child laborers to prevent these children from being lazy and doing hard work. Factories usually work in two shifts, with one shift every 12 hours, working more than 70 hours a week, with only Sundays off.
Although we now see that this method of child labor is very inhumane, if these children live on the streets, they will easily freeze to death or starve to death. These workhouses were often overcrowded and had to find other ways for these children to make a living, otherwise they would be unsustainable.
The environment in these factories is very harsh. In order to reduce the chance of cotton thread breakage, the indoor temperature is usually required to be relatively high, and the humidity is also very high, which means that the entire workshop is stuffy and hot. The lubricant used at that time was whale oil, which caused a foul smell everywhere.
So when the first large-scale factories appeared, people's common impressions were of poverty, filth, greed, and disease. Due to the dust and lint floating in the factory, many workers suffered from pneumoconiosis early on. People generally believed that this was the entrance to hell.
What changed the impression that factories = hell is the Lowell Factory in Massachusetts, USA. Like Manchester, UK, there are many factories together and the number of workers exceeds 20,000. Different from the hell on earth in the UK, these factories not only have shops, churches, but also libraries, lecture halls, etc. The textile workers here are well-dressed and participate in various social activities after work. Compared with the dark factories in the UK, , just like a paradise.
At that time, the common view was that capitalism was inherently evil. For example, in "Das Kapital", it was believed that working in a factory was a form of torture, and that people could do anything except work without stopping. Nothing can be done, including thinking.
So how did the Lowell plant do it? Many people attribute this phenomenon to the piety of the Puritans who fled to the United States and their correct attitude towards wealth. In fact, the main reason is that the United States is extremely short of coal, so even though the whole world is using steam engines, the United States still uses the most primitive water power as the source of power.
Therefore, early factories were built next to huge waterfalls. A huge waterfall could support dozens of factories operating at the same time. Therefore, these factories in the United States are not like the industrial centers in Britain, where smoke billows all day long and the stench of coal ash and sulfur dioxide is everywhere.
Unlike the dense population in the UK, human resources in the United States are very scarce. Therefore, although American factories also recruit child labor, there are simply not enough children, so more students are recruited into the factories. These educated workers are more independent and hope to gain more fun from group life in addition to making money.
Compared with large factories in Europe, there is not only no proletariat, but also no large-scale strikes. Workers in these factories can go home at any time, and they are also willing to participate in public affairs. , many political elites after the founding of the People's Republic of China were influenced by factory culture.
It was the emergence of the Lowell Factory that allowed the American social elite to see an industrial society that was different from southern farms. The typical representative of this was the northern political elite represented by Hamilton. They saw the huge changes that industrialization had brought to Britain. The United States in the New World was definitely different from Europe in the Old World, and it could also break the status quo of American slavery.
People’s admiration for the industrial giant comes from the emergence of the steel giant. In May 1876, in order to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the release of the Declaration of Independence, Americans held an exposition in Philadelphia. At the exposition, the Americans displayed a huge industrial giant, a 12-meter-high steam engine with only a drive shaft. It is 37 kilometers long. During the half-year exhibition, it attracted more than 10 million people to visit.
People gradually got rid of the negative evaluation of industrialization. Later, the United Kingdom held the "International Industrial Exposition". The entire exhibition hall was made of steel and glass, which became a model for exhibition halls in the following hundreds of years. Then in 1889, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, the huge Eiffel Tower was built in Paris. This behemoth weighing 100,000 tons uses 18,000 components and 2.5 million rivets alone. It will be painted every 7 years, using up to 52 tons of paint each time.
Compared with textile factories, the process flow of steel plants is more complex and the cost is higher than that of textile factories. Subsequently, the automobile factory born in the 20th century became a small city. For example, in 1924, a factory owned by Ford employed more than 42,000 people. In order to prevent workers from going on strike, Ford had to double workers' wages and instituted strict codes of conduct: no late arrival, no drinking, and even having to marry their legal partners. To this end, Ford also established a "Social Department" to investigate workers' private lives. If their lifestyle is not correct, they may also face the risk of unemployment.
In Jeffrey West's book "Scale", he believes: Whether it is nature or organizations in our reality, they will tend to get bigger and bigger. The fundamental reason is that the organization gets bigger. The utilization rate of infrastructure will be higher, which means that the larger the scale, the more resources will be saved.
The book calculates the total length of urban roads, the number of gas stations, and the total length of water and power lines, which are proportional to the population to the power of 0.85. If calculated according to this proportional relationship, if a city with a population of 1 million needs 50 gas stations, a city with a population of 2 million only needs 80 gas stations.
In addition, West also calculated that the number of innovation patents in a city and its production capacity are directly proportional to the 1.15th power of the population. In other words, the larger the city, the faster the city's production capacity will increase. Simply put, the larger the city, the less consumption and higher output, so the per capita benefits will increase. This is why the larger the city, the higher the average salary.
In addition, large companies are easier for people to trust. For example, when we buy insurance, it is difficult to understand the complex logic behind the insurance, but we can see the huge scale behind the insurance company, and the insurance company’s Large tall buildings undoubtedly increase our trust.
Of course, there is a premise that the larger the scale, the more efficient it will be. That is, everyone must follow unified steps and work in the same direction. If within the company or within the city, everyone is working in different directions, Instead, they consume each other. This is why Ford emphasizes culture and rules, and Foxconn looks like a military camp, or a prison.