阿迪達斯CEO稱制造業大舉迴流是“幻想”

Adidas does plan to ramp up production at fully automated “speed factories” in Germany and Atlanta staffed by robots, and this month announced a partnership with Silicon Valley start-up Carbon to produce trainers with 3D-printed soles at faster speeds.

阿迪達斯的確計劃提高在德國和亞特蘭大配備機器人的全自動“快速工廠”(speed factory)的產量。本月，阿迪達斯還宣佈與硅谷初創企業Carbon合作，以更快的速度生產帶有3D打印鞋底的跑鞋。

But Mr Rorsted said: “I don’t see full automation in the next five to 10 years,” adding that Asia’s semi-automated manufacturing is still significantly faster than any 3D printing technology. The automated plants will manufacture about 1m pairs of shoes annually — a tiny fraction of the 360m pairs the company sells globally each year.

不過，羅思德表示：“我不認爲在今後五到十年內會實現全面自動化。”他還表示，亞洲的半自動製造仍顯著快於任何3D打印技術。上述自動化工廠每年將生產大約100萬雙鞋，這隻佔該公司每年在全球銷售的3.6億雙鞋的很小一部分。

Adidas’s largest market is the US, where companies have been under pressure from the Trump administration to announce manufacturing bases in America.

阿迪達斯最大的市場是美國。在美國，企業正面臨特朗普(Trump)政府的壓力，要它們宣佈在美設立製造基地。

“[Moving] to the US, the only thing you get out of it is potentially a political interest, you are moving into a market where you have no competence. Just financially it’s very illogical and highly unlikely that will happen. And that goes for the entire industry, I’m not speaking just for Adidas,” said Mr Rorsted.

羅思德說：“（遷）到美國，你從中得到的唯一東西可能是政治利益，你將遷入一個你無力幹好的市場。僅從財務角度講就非常不合理，發生的可能性極低。這一點適用於整個行業，我並不只是在說阿迪達斯。”

“What you’re going to see is sophisticated manufacturing technology manufacturing shoes for a very small market segment, and then you’re going to see those sophisticated manufacturing technologies taken back into China,” he said.

他說：“你將看到的是用複雜的製造技術爲很小的一個細分市場生產鞋子，而接下來你將看到的是那些複雜的製造技術被帶回到中國。”

Rising wages in China and a rising number of labour disputes have pushed many apparel manufacturers to shift production away from the Asian powerhouse to south and Southeast Asian countries.

中國不斷上漲的工資和不斷增多的勞資糾紛，已促使許多服裝製造商將生產從這個亞洲製造業龍頭遷往南亞和東南亞國家。

But China was Adidas’s fastest-growing market last year, with a 28 per cent sales expansion which it predicts will remain in “double-digits” this year, increasing incentives to remain.

不過，中國是阿迪達斯去年增長最快的市場，銷售增幅達到28%。而且阿迪達斯預期，中國市場今年將保持“兩位數”增長。這令阿迪達斯有更大的動機留在中國。

“Why will you have manufacturing in China?” said Mr Rorsted. “Because of the size of the market, you want speed to access the market. I’m not concerned about jobs in China, we have been a net creator of jobs in China, but the jobs will change over time.”

羅思德表示：“爲什麼你會在中國生產？由於中國的市場規模，你希望快速進入這一市場。我不關注中國的工作崗位，我們在中國一直是工作崗位的淨創造者，但這些工作崗位會隨着時間而變化。”

Asian plants will become more automated, he said, but there were some processes of the roughly 120 steps in creating an Adidas shoe that remain stubbornly resistant to automation. “The biggest challenge the shoe industry has is how do you create a robot that puts the lace into the shoe,” Mr Rorsted said. “I’m not kidding. That’s a complete manual process today. There is no technology for that.”

他說，亞洲工廠的自動化程度會提高，但在生產阿迪達斯鞋子的大約120道工序中，仍有部分頑固地“抵抗”自動化。羅思德表示：“製鞋業面臨的最大挑戰是如何搞出爲鞋子穿鞋帶的機器人。我不是在開玩笑。這在今天仍是個完全手工的工序。沒有技術能做到這一點。”