Is Baxter a sign of an entirely automated manufacturing future?

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In June 2011, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou announced plans to deploy one million robots across factory assembly lines, as part of a company-wide effort to adopt more automated manufacturing processes.

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The lightest ultrastrong automotive materials, carbon-fiber composites, looked too costly for cars until a Rocky Mountain Institute spinoff commercialized an automated manufacturing process that makes complex composite parts in less than a minute.

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Further, as manufacturing moves toward a more information-intensive, automated, and flexible future, it is returning to the US. With new materials, new techniques and demands for mass-customization, manufacturing will increasingly rely on knowledge, design capabilities, innovation and research.

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When you go into just about any manufacturing plant these days, so much of it is automated.

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Gou envisions a fully-automated (and presumably almost employee-free) component factory inside of five years, has qualms about expanding his manufacturing presence in America ("I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day"), and pays executive bonuses out of his own dividends to protect the company's bottom line... so yeah, he's quite the industrialist.

ENGADGET: BusinessWeek profiles Foxconn founder (and veritable pitbull) Terry Gou