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I went to production heaven
- tomalpha 9y agoIt's a good read and I enjoy his writing style. I did chuckle at a few of his thoughts though and hope that they were intended to be as tongue-in-cheek as I took them to be: > As we walk through the factory, our small group is permanently trailed by two firemen, with a big first aid kit in hand. Nothing happens.
- theQzer 9y agoHuh? Congrats on your sense of humor.
- contingencies 9y agoI was impressed with the summary points regarding modern automotive production practices in the article. Allegedly, the value in robots and automation is the speed of retooling, not the overall line speed which one would naively assume. Also, smart automakers assemble to order. We are truly a far cry from Henry Ford and his Model T! This all bodes well for our personalized robotic food production network at http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ :)
- surfmike 9y agoThat was surprising to me to learn too, since I would have expected a more manual human-operated line to be able to retool faster.
- Qworg 9y agoThe biggest reason to switch to robots in manufacturing is quality control, followed by retooling speed, followed (distantly) by line speed. If you have any humans in your process, you only go as fast as they can.
- rwj 9y agoAs some who works in manufacturing, the more your volume goes up, the more you value repeatability. One error in a hundred isn't an issue when you manufacture ten, but when you manufacture a million it is a huge headache.
- avs733 9y agoWhile they are decidedly bearish on Tesla, dailykanban's analysis is worth reading. They know one thing (auto manufacturing) and they know it really well. Their comments on just how mismatched Tesla's public statements and private actions are is damning...even if it sometimes feels a bit like potshots.
- fhood 9y agoI'm not making comments about the validity of the article, but I do want to point out that a quick google search of the author seems to imply that he is pretty much universally disliked.
- zardo 9y agoGoogle search results are not designed to be a representative sample of opinion.
- fhood 9y agoSure, I just meant to imply that the article should be read with the knowledge that the author is pretty controversial.
- jumsdogpetter 9y agoRepeating truths usually does get someone upset.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dv_dt 9y agoSo does reporting untruths. That people are upset isn't a measure of truth either way.
- 9y ago
- syntaxing 9y agoSerious question, I read about all these amazing factory line marvels and how much faster it is to create these state of the art factories in China. But I never understood what is giving China such a huge competitive advantage? Why does it take that much longer in Europe and the USA? Sure, we can dive into some of the political rhetoric, but from an engineering prospective, what is the root cause? Is there a price to making these factory faster (such as government subsidy)?
- emiliobumachar 9y agoI speculate that not-in-my-backyard-ism is much less of an issue in China, because people living nearby do not get as much of a say in whether to allow it.
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- aklemm 9y agoAnd I would speculate that issue is true throughout the whole system. With strong private property laws, fairly transparent government accountable in elections, employees with voices, and lawyers ready to do battle for any side of an issue, then there are many more considerations needed for any large project. That said, there's a whole bunch of other good explanations in this thread. Very informative.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoChina hasn’t card very much about its environment, so minimal environmental reviews are required to setup a new factory. This obviously can’t continue as china becomes more serious about environmental protection.
- contingencies 9y agoNot true anymore. You need to submit written environmental protection plans straight up just to register a venture these days, let alone obtain the requisite licenses to operate, and corporate board members are held personally liable. It has reached the point where the default legal advice is "stay off boards in mainland China".
- AskewEgret 9y agoI can remember reading Bertel Schmitt over at TTAC [1] years ago. You will find very few people in the world who can write well enough and have the level of car industry knowledge that he has. If I remember correctly, he started working at Volkswagen in the 1980s. I can still remember an article about a Toyota factory [2] that is quite the opposite from this Volvo factory [1] http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/author/bertel-schmitt http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/author/bertel-schmitt [2] http://archive.fortune.com/2011/02/18/news/international/toyota-factory-japan-asia.fortune/index.htm http://archive.fortune.com/2011/02/18/news/international/toy...
- Dalex0 9y agoWow interesting read that the Toyota factory is the opposite. I think some adjustments where made targeting property cost in Japan are much higher but overall the property cost compared to total factory investment cost are low. But also the Chinese factory is producing higher margin cars compared to low revenue cars from Toyota.
- busterarm 9y agoToyota's manufacturing methods are well known at this point... If you've read about Lean Engineering or the Toyota Kata or even foundational devops books like The Phoenix Project, you've been beaten over the head with the idea that Toyota's process is highly effective. (And it is)
- ndh2 9y agoTitle should be "Some go to car production hell. I went to production heaven." (drop one "production").
- jobigoud 9y agoI had a hard time parsing the title for some reason, thinking it was about golang. Some people go to car-production hell. I went to car-production heaven.
- devin 9y agoThe title is supposed to be "Some people go to car production hell. I went to production heaven." The original article doesn't have car in the second part of the title.
- vxNsr 9y agoSo the tl;dr of this article is that tesla doesn't have the institutional knowledge of volvo and is still trying to figure out how to build a factory, meanwhile, volvo's parent company saw astronomic growth while tesla's value merely almost doubled.
- avs733 9y agoEh...I'm not sure that's it. I read this much more as 'Volvo is trying to rethink what they are trying to accomplish and why with a factory' as compared to Tesla who is 'struggling to push sustaining innovation of an outdated factory model that they don't really understand'.
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- alexanderstears 9y agoThis is an over dramatic take. It's too soon to know how Volvo's China factory is working, the initial signs are promising but there's so much more to car quality than how the manufacturer assembles it. Historically, we've seen inconsistent quality out of Chinese car parts and there's nothing you can do on final assembly to make a defective wheel bearing work better (the only option is to assemble the car with a better wheel bearing). To the extent that the Chinese volvos have Chinese component quality problems, the Chinese factory is further removed from production heaven. Toyota's Tahara plant is recognized as the plant capable of the best car manufacturing in the world and it wouldn't be possible without the Japanese supplier base. It would have been nice if they compared and contrasted Tahara with Fremont but the Chinese Volvo plant offers a better comparison in terms of modernity. But I had a horse in the race. I was a model 3 reservation holder but opted for the refund when the quality issues came to light. I take machine quality very seriously and I was worried about resenting the build quality on my model 3. Though I think Tesla can get it right, the complexity of an electric car is much lower than an ICE car. Toyota has had a target on its back since about 1973 (when its quality advantage became decisive) - everyone benchmarks Toyota's manufacturing. When Toyota launched the Lexus LS400 in 1989, GM engineers concluded that they couldn't replicate the precision and quality with a blank check and an aggressive time frame. In 2010, Consumer Reports estimated that an average 1993 Lexus LS400 had as many trips to the dealer / failures as a brand new Mercedes S class. Now there are more issues at play with a 17 year old car than build quality, but good build quality is a good place to start. I think Musk has called out Toyota by name as their benchmark. Tesla has a long way to go but I give them the highest odds of making it. They have the most opportunity to consolidate their supplier base. They have one of the most simple cars to manufacture and they have some the cheapest capital - they can turn it into a money game just like Amazon would. They're in the best position to actually hit the target on Toyota's back.
- Dalex0 9y ago"In 2010, Consumer Reports estimated that an average 1993 Lexus LS400 had as many trips to the dealer / failures as a brand new Mercedes S class." You mean the sedan has overall the same sum of issues after 7 years as a brand new after e.g. one year?
- ucaetano 9y agoIt is interesting to see the trend in the machinery: while the factory is in China, and the brand is Swedish, all the precision machinery, instruments, etc. come from Switzerland and Germany. Güdel, ABB, Carl Zeiss, Kuka, etc.
- avs733 9y agoThat isn't really new... If you look at Machine tools, Europe generally has the strongest base because their history with them goes way way back (think...first cannons). There are manufacturers in the US (e.g., Haas, Gleason) but they are smaller market and either highly specialized or known for being good enough and less expensive (Haas).
- ucaetano 9y agoYes, I'm Swiss, people are usually surprised when they realise how industrialized Switzerland is, and how machinery (especially precision machinery) and not watches, chocolate or cheese, are our largest exports.
- greeneggs 9y agoAnd pharmaceuticals even more than machinery. http://www.worldstopexports.com/switzerlands-top-10-exports/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/switzerlands-top-10-exports/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland#/media/File:Tree_map_export_che_all_show_2010_SITC4.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland#/media/...
- bsder 9y agoAs I understand it, Haas has an entire facility solely dedicated to running full-time and supplying the machines that Apple installs in China for manufacturing iPhones--which are some of the most mechanically demanding products in the world. I remember reading this from an article discussing the fact that it would be impossible for Apple to switch from metal to ceramic cases simply because they would have to redo a massive amount of tooling.
- 9y ago
- neves 9y agoAre there more good references about the terrible Tesla factory?
- dfox 9y agoThe article mentions that Tesla wants to do batch manufacturing and frames it as somehow bad thing in comparison to JIT used by other car makers. In fact JIT outsources the logistics chaos caused by inconsistencies of planned order betweeen different production steps to component manufacturers which does not make much sense with vertical integration. Commonly used metric for out-of-orderness (ie. number of times when next serial number is smaller than previous one) usualy works out to single digit percents, which looks good on paper but in actual logistics reality means that order of components picked from warehouse is essentialy random (measured by edit distance between stored and picked order) and automating that is more expensive than doing manual picking.