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Disclaimer I don't know anything about manufacturing, but let me pose a challenge to your assertion that manufacturing has nothing to learn from the software in

Disclaimer I don't know anything about manufacturing, but let me pose a challenge to your assertion that manufacturing has nothing to learn from the software industry. Elon Musk seems to have taken many ideas from the software industry to manufacturing at Tesla and SpaceX. My understanding is that manufacturing uses more of what we software developers would call a waterfall method of development. Long upfront phase with research and detailed specifications before manufacture. Elon Musk seems to have favored a more software like approach of rapid iterations and feedback. E.g. trying out more risky things, see it break and go back to the drawing board. They also seems to have borrowed the idea of platforms from the software business. Where you gradually refine an established system. E.g. I read that in comparison to other auto manufacturers they create detailed specs for all their parts and fan out the production to all sorts of contractors. These guys might not get used in the next round, in the next model. So you can't e.g. gradually refine and upgrade the software systems of the car in the same manner in traditional manufacturing. Mind you I am not doing a great job of explaining these details, if you don't know what I am talking about, better to read up other accounts of the differences between Tesla and other auto manufacturers as well as SpaceX and other rocket makers. To be fair this isn't the same as discussed in this article which is more about what happens at the part level. What Tesla and SpaceX has changed is what happens at the over organizational level. Doing more manufacturing in house and relying on off the shelf parts rather than getting them made according to some spec. E.g. SpaceX uses seatbelts manufactured for race car drivers as their astronaut seatbelts rather than using magnitudes more expensive and custom made astronaut seatbelts.

rebootthesystem 10y ago
I am intimately familiar with the philosophy you describe. Let me just say this. There are certain realities in every business. If you are baking cookies in your kitchen you can get away with doing things a certain way. You scoff at the guys making cookies using contract kitchens. Your ways are better. Until you hit a certain scale. Once you hit that scale you'll be the one talking to the contract kitchens and you'll have to learn and accept the way they work. Now you laugh at the folks making cookies in their kitchens and still think the large multinational operations are archaic, old-school, slow and inefficient. Until you reach a new scale. And now you have to make things in the millions. And the consequences of making mistakes can end your business. So you seek to learn and adopt the process the large organizations use to reliably manufacture process at a scale you never dreamed of. And that's when you finally understand and realize things were not really as bad as you thought when you were in the kitchen. There's a "form follows function" reality to manufacturing at different scales. Tesla can do things the way they do because their scale allows them to operate this way. And also because they are making electric cars, which are a LOT easier than gas powered cars. By switching to an electric motor the complexity of the manufacturing process changes to the extent that eliminating a couple of thousand mechanical components allows. Electric motors are simple and manufacturing electronic motor controllers is far more efficient than assembling and testing internal combustion engines. Yet, if Tesla ever achieves the same scale as a Ford, GM or others it is very likely they will have to operate almost exactly the same way as the large companies do. You can't iterate fast when you are making a million units of a design per year. Making mistakes can cost your company. And, when that's the context, you go slow, you plan everything, create detailed specifications, recruit and verify suppliers, order things a year in advance, etc. With regards to such things as racing seat belts vs. aerospace seat belts, well, it's a great way to feel "rogue" and fantastic for press releases. In the context of a twenty five million dollar rocket and one where the consequence of being "hip" and a maverick is that people die, things, I'll be you, are far more like traditional aerospace than not. Things in aerospace aren't expensive just to be expensive. No, they cost money because the are generally unique, they have to meet certain specification and, in some cases, people's lives depend on them. Just like in Medical. Bottom line: You can be a maverick and cut corners when you are in the garage. As things get "real" you will end-up making pretty much all of the same decisions everyone before you made before you thought everyone was stupid and incompetent. And that's the problem I have with a lot of these things. These ridiculous echo chambers starts off assuming everyone before them was stupid and didn't know how to innovate (or didn't care to). And that's patently false. Innovation is part of every day engineering. But it has to be constrained by limitations of the realities within which they exist. A book titled "The innovator's dilemma" is a great read that covers part of the reason companies are not able to destroy it all and do something different. Hint: Good management is the reason companies don't adopt every possible shift in technology. If these guys were talking about making metal-based 3D printing simple and inexpensive and that's all they focused on I'd be singing their praises. If I could buy a metal 3D printer today for, say $50K to $100K, with better throughput, reliability, accuracy and operating cost than compared to a VMC (and the ability to work with a dozen different materials) I'd be first in line buying half a dozen of them. What they are talking about instead is just silly.

rebootthesystem 10y ago

I am intimately familiar with the philosophy you describe. Let me just say this. There are certain realities in every business. If you are baking cookies in your kitchen you can get away with doing things a certain way. You scoff at the guys making cookies using contract kitchens. Your ways are better. Until you hit a certain scale. Once you hit that scale you'll be the one talking to the contract kitchens and you'll have to learn and accept the way they work. Now you laugh at the folks making cookies in their kitchens and still think the large multinational operations are archaic, old-school, slow and inefficient. Until you reach a new scale. And now you have to make things in the millions. And the consequences of making mistakes can end your business. So you seek to learn and adopt the process the large organizations use to reliably manufacture process at a scale you never dreamed of. And that's when you finally understand and realize things were not really as bad as you thought when you were in the kitchen. There's a "form follows function" reality to manufacturing at different scales. Tesla can do things the way they do because their scale allows them to operate this way. And also because they are making electric cars, which are a LOT easier than gas powered cars. By switching to an electric motor the complexity of the manufacturing process changes to the extent that eliminating a couple of thousand mechanical components allows. Electric motors are simple and manufacturing electronic motor controllers is far more efficient than assembling and testing internal combustion engines. Yet, if Tesla ever achieves the same scale as a Ford, GM or others it is very likely they will have to operate almost exactly the same way as the large companies do. You can't iterate fast when you are making a million units of a design per year. Making mistakes can cost your company. And, when that's the context, you go slow, you plan everything, create detailed specifications, recruit and verify suppliers, order things a year in advance, etc. With regards to such things as racing seat belts vs. aerospace seat belts, well, it's a great way to feel "rogue" and fantastic for press releases. In the context of a twenty five million dollar rocket and one where the consequence of being "hip" and a maverick is that people die, things, I'll be you, are far more like traditional aerospace than not. Things in aerospace aren't expensive just to be expensive. No, they cost money because the are generally unique, they have to meet certain specification and, in some cases, people's lives depend on them. Just like in Medical. Bottom line: You can be a maverick and cut corners when you are in the garage. As things get "real" you will end-up making pretty much all of the same decisions everyone before you made before you thought everyone was stupid and incompetent. And that's the problem I have with a lot of these things. These ridiculous echo chambers starts off assuming everyone before them was stupid and didn't know how to innovate (or didn't care to). And that's patently false. Innovation is part of every day engineering. But it has to be constrained by limitations of the realities within which they exist. A book titled "The innovator's dilemma" is a great read that covers part of the reason companies are not able to destroy it all and do something different. Hint: Good management is the reason companies don't adopt every possible shift in technology. If these guys were talking about making metal-based 3D printing simple and inexpensive and that's all they focused on I'd be singing their praises. If I could buy a metal 3D printer today for, say $50K to $100K, with better throughput, reliability, accuracy and operating cost than compared to a VMC (and the ability to work with a dozen different materials) I'd be first in line buying half a dozen of them. What they are talking about instead is just silly.