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Yeah I also read about how American car factories used super sophisticated and expensive computer system back in the 80-90s only to realize that the Japanese ac

Yeah I also read about how American car factories used super sophisticated and expensive computer system back in the 80-90s only to realize that the Japanese accomplished the same with just people and some cleverly placed sticker symbols. I think underlying a lot of this is a disdain in America for blue collar workers. People at the top thing of them as dumb monkeys and that there is nothing to what they do. Hence the falsely assume a computer or robot can do the job just as well. The Japanese showed that by utilizing what humans are actually got at you get better productivity. Using humans the same way as robots is a very bad way of utilizing the flexibility inherent in a human.

gutnor 8y ago
> I think underlying a lot of this is a disdain in America for blue collar workers. It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. Obviously we were not quite there yet in the 80's/90's. Otherwise you would be reading the opposite story on how Japanese Car Factories failed because they used human instead of machine like in the US. Actually you can replace "Japanese Car Factories" in the previous sentence with a lot of thing that are actually true today. Now, about Tesla, there is some relevance. They are still building car that are very much like regular cars and other manufacturer are building their own factories regularly for new platform/model, not held back by legacy issues. So it does indeed seem that Tesla is at an experience disadvantage. I guess what happens is that this is Tesla trying to leverage a manufacturing bet on top of its successful "electric car" bet. You can see that on how harshly they lashed at journalists talking about their manufacturing safety, and draw some parallel with the initial review of the model s ( compared to today where you can make a 100 million view video bad mouthing about their car and Musk would probably not even be notified ) Tesla real goal is to find a manufacturing process that can get them producing car 1 order or 2 order of magnitude faster than the competition (and you know such a process cannot include human). They want to be the market leader by volume on every single class of electric vehicle in 10 years.
- Bendingo 8y ago
  > It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. This is circular reasoning. Blue collar jobs will only disappear if no-one builds factories using them, because everyone knows these jobs will disappear. > you know such a process cannot include human Sounds like you're just assuming this is true, because "more tech is always better/faster/etc". I'm not so sure this is correct.
- sien 8y ago
  > It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. Plumbers are not going to disappear. There is heaps of repair work that won't disappear. But beyond repair, look at construction. There are all sorts of claims about how 3D printing and full automation of house construction is coming, but go and look at almost any construction site you see. (edit: Innovation is hard with construction in part because people want things that will definitely last 50 years. Fail fast is great on a web app, but what about failure in 10 years because 3D printed concrete doesn't work correctly in your location? How about brick laying robots cement failing in 15 years when the company is insolvent? Are you up for the risk? ) Power tools introduced in the 1950s or earlier have made a huge difference, but these jobs do not appear to be disappearing. In Australia I've heard of teachers and people who can write mean python code quitting to become builders. People with power tools are productive and very flexible. We're a long way off from a machine that can attach a deck to a house and make a hole in a wall for a window.
- wpietri 8y ago
  > everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear Everybody does not know that. Indeed, a lot of people know the opposite. Including Toyota, who went from a small-time player in post-war Japan to the world's largest car company based on the belief those jobs weren't going anywhere. How is just assuming that without evidence not disdain for blue collar workers? > Tesla real goal is to find a manufacturing process that can get them producing car 1 order or 2 order of magnitude faster than the competition (and you know such a process cannot include human). I'm not sure this is true, and if it is, I don't think it's a particularly smart goal. Toyota spends ~30 worker-hours on building a car. Getting that down to 3 doesn't do much to reduce costs, and getting them down to 0.3 does way less. To make that happen, Tesla will have to invest a lot of money in less flexible, less repurposable hardware and software. This a) doesn't save money in the short term, b) can introduce significant lags (because they're spending time up front to save time later, and also because they've increased delay risk), and c) may lock them in to suboptimal techniques in conditions where human workers could keep improving.

gutnor 8y ago

> I think underlying a lot of this is a disdain in America for blue collar workers. It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. Obviously we were not quite there yet in the 80's/90's. Otherwise you would be reading the opposite story on how Japanese Car Factories failed because they used human instead of machine like in the US. Actually you can replace "Japanese Car Factories" in the previous sentence with a lot of thing that are actually true today. Now, about Tesla, there is some relevance. They are still building car that are very much like regular cars and other manufacturer are building their own factories regularly for new platform/model, not held back by legacy issues. So it does indeed seem that Tesla is at an experience disadvantage. I guess what happens is that this is Tesla trying to leverage a manufacturing bet on top of its successful "electric car" bet. You can see that on how harshly they lashed at journalists talking about their manufacturing safety, and draw some parallel with the initial review of the model s ( compared to today where you can make a 100 million view video bad mouthing about their car and Musk would probably not even be notified ) Tesla real goal is to find a manufacturing process that can get them producing car 1 order or 2 order of magnitude faster than the competition (and you know such a process cannot include human). They want to be the market leader by volume on every single class of electric vehicle in 10 years.

Bendingo 8y ago
> It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. This is circular reasoning. Blue collar jobs will only disappear if no-one builds factories using them, because everyone knows these jobs will disappear. > you know such a process cannot include human Sounds like you're just assuming this is true, because "more tech is always better/faster/etc". I'm not so sure this is correct.
sien 8y ago
> It could simply be that everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear. You don't want to build your latest factory using technology that will make you obsolete in a few years. Plumbers are not going to disappear. There is heaps of repair work that won't disappear. But beyond repair, look at construction. There are all sorts of claims about how 3D printing and full automation of house construction is coming, but go and look at almost any construction site you see. (edit: Innovation is hard with construction in part because people want things that will definitely last 50 years. Fail fast is great on a web app, but what about failure in 10 years because 3D printed concrete doesn't work correctly in your location? How about brick laying robots cement failing in 15 years when the company is insolvent? Are you up for the risk? ) Power tools introduced in the 1950s or earlier have made a huge difference, but these jobs do not appear to be disappearing. In Australia I've heard of teachers and people who can write mean python code quitting to become builders. People with power tools are productive and very flexible. We're a long way off from a machine that can attach a deck to a house and make a hole in a wall for a window.
wpietri 8y ago
> everybody knows that blue collar job are eventually going to disappear Everybody does not know that. Indeed, a lot of people know the opposite. Including Toyota, who went from a small-time player in post-war Japan to the world's largest car company based on the belief those jobs weren't going anywhere. How is just assuming that without evidence not disdain for blue collar workers? > Tesla real goal is to find a manufacturing process that can get them producing car 1 order or 2 order of magnitude faster than the competition (and you know such a process cannot include human). I'm not sure this is true, and if it is, I don't think it's a particularly smart goal. Toyota spends ~30 worker-hours on building a car. Getting that down to 3 doesn't do much to reduce costs, and getting them down to 0.3 does way less. To make that happen, Tesla will have to invest a lot of money in less flexible, less repurposable hardware and software. This a) doesn't save money in the short term, b) can introduce significant lags (because they're spending time up front to save time later, and also because they've increased delay risk), and c) may lock them in to suboptimal techniques in conditions where human workers could keep improving.