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- Sony Corp wants to slash TV manufacturing costs by giving all the work to robots, the FT reported.
- The company is targeting full automation of TV manufacturing and increased use of robotics for making smartphones, cameras.
- It expects to cut costs by 70% at its largest television-making factory.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Sony wants to give robots complete control of making its televisions in a bid to slash costs, according to a report in the Financial Times on Sunday.
Kimio Maki, head of Sony's electronics businesses, told the newspaper that he expected full automation of production lines at the company's main TV factory in Malaysia to cut costs by 70% by the fiscal year 2023, compared with 2018.
Maki said that Sony also wanted to increase its use of robotic automation in smartphone and camera manufacturing, although it would keep some human workers on those production lines.
He told the newspaper: "I don't think automation alone using robots will bring enough merits. The key is to use digitalization to link both sales and manufacturing."
Sales data would be studied using artificial intelligence to more effectively calculate manufacturing volumes, Maki told the FT.