Apple wants to replace 50% of iPhone final assembly line workers with automation

A new report from The Information today details Apple’s efforts to automate more of the iPhone production process. The report explains that Apple has told managers to “reduce the number of workers on iPhone final assembly lines by as much as 50% over the next few years.”

According to the report, this edict was handed down by Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of operations. The decision was reportedly made shortly after violent clashes between iPhone workers and police outside of Foxconn’s primary assembly plant in November 2022.

In order to reduce its overall headcount, The Information reports that Apple is moving forward with supply chain and production automation projects that it “had previously mothballed due to high up-front costs.”

The machinery necessary to automate iPhone production can sometimes cost hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In some instances, Apple pressured manufacturing partners to make this up-front investment, with varying degrees of success.

According to data published by Apple in annual supply chain reports, “the total number of employees it monitors at its manufacturing partners for work-hour compliance” fell from 1.6 million in 2022 to 1.4 million in 2023.

The report says there is a “significant amount of automation” in the final assembly of the iPhone 15. Much of this work is led by Peter Thompson, an operations vice president at Apple:

Over the past year, Thompson’s team has successfully automated parts of the iPhone’s assembly, working closely with manufacturing partners such as Foxconn, Luxshare Precision and Pegatron. Those successes include machines that install metal brackets and flexible printed circuit boards onto components without human aid, said multiple people with direct knowledge of the effort.

These and similar efforts have allowed Apple and its partners to eliminate positions for thousands of workers in China, according to people who work in Apple’s supply chain. For some processes, they have reduced headcount by as much as 30%, according to one employee at an iPhone manufacturing partner.

The Information also points to a pair of acquisitions that have helped Apple’s supply chain automation efforts, including DarwinAI. Apple also reportedly acquired a company called Drishti last year, which analyzes video footage of assembly lines to “identify bottlenecks and production problems in real-time.

For the iPhone 16 this year, Apple had initially planned to automate the process of installing iPhone buttons and other components. However, these plans were canceled “because of the high rate of defects.”

Still, even as it hits stumbling blocks along the way, Apple’s end goal is to reduce the number of workers on the final iPhone assembly lines by up to 50%.