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.
阿迪达斯的确计划提高在德国和亚特兰大配备机器人的全自动“快速工厂”(speed factory)的产量。本月，阿迪达斯还宣布与硅谷初创企业Carbon合作，以更快的速度生产带有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.
不过，罗思德表示：“我不认为在今后五到十年内会实现全面自动化。”他还表示，亚洲的半自动制造仍显著快于任何3D打印技术。上述自动化工厂每年将生产大约100万双鞋，这只占该公司每年在全球销售的3.6亿双鞋的很小一部分。Adidas’s largest market is the US, where companies have been under pressure from the Trump administration to announce manufacturing bases in America.
阿迪达斯最大的市场是美国。在美国，企业正面临特朗普(Trump)政府的压力，要它们宣布在美设立制造基地。
“[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.
罗思德说：“（迁）到美国，你从中得到的唯一东西可能是政治利益，你将迁入一个你无力干好的市场。仅从财务角度讲就非常不合理，发生的可能性极低。这一点适用于整个行业，我并不只是在说阿迪达斯。”“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.
他说：“你将看到的是用复杂的制造技术为很小的一个细分市场生产鞋子，而接下来你将看到的是那些复杂的制造技术被带回到中国。”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.
中国不断上涨的工资和不断增多的劳资纠纷，已促使许多服装制造商将生产从这个亚洲制造业龙头迁往南亚和东南亚国家。
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.
不过，中国是阿迪达斯去年增长最快的市场，销售增幅达到28%。而且阿迪达斯预期，中国市场今年将保持“两位数”增长。这令阿迪达斯有更大的动机留在中国。“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.”
罗思德表示：“为什么你会在中国生产？由于中国的市场规模，你希望快速进入这一市场。我不关注中国的工作岗位，我们在中国一直是工作岗位的净创造者，但这些工作岗位会随着时间而变化。”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.”
他说，亚洲工厂的自动化程度会提高，但在生产阿迪达斯鞋子的大约120道工序中，仍有部分顽固地“抵抗”自动化。罗思德表示：“制鞋业面临的最大挑战是如何搞出为鞋子穿鞋带的机器人。我不是在开玩笑。这在今天仍是个完全手工的工序。没有技术能做到这一点。”