7 ms·

Tesla is holding a hackathon to fix two robot bottlenecks in Model 3 production

85 points by evo_9 9y ago

lainga 9y ago
Any news on whether the hackathon is internal or external? If it's come-all-takers, it looks like Tesla is airing the unspoken point of hackathons (to provide the company with unpaid innovation). A bold move... edit: is, it's going on as we speak
- crb002 9y ago
  Even simple things like having two robot arms for the same task with one idle but ready in case the other fails; or being able to electronically label some assemblies as rejects and no-op everything on the down the line until they hit an eject point. Ability to re-insert them again later. On-off ramps with even 20 minutes of buffer capacity would be extremely helpful in building redundancy into the system.
  - Animats 9y ago
    20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large supermarket. Buffering space is a big cost. Here's a Coca-Cola bottling plant.[1] This one has an extremely low employee count. It's mostly buffering space. That gives employees time to move to the trouble spot and deal with problems. Since Coca-Cola has been at this a while, they must need all that buffering. In an auto final assembly plant, you don't have the luxury of big buffers. On a rigid line, there's no buffering at all - if any station stops, the whole line must stop. That leads to quality problems - if someone drops a bolt, that bolt never gets inserted. A few seconds of buffering between stations helps. That's what Toyota's kanban system introduced. If you watch videos of Toyota production lines, they have a big timer showing the cycle time of the last cycle. It's not always the same. Sometimes a cycle takes a few seconds longer. If something goes wrong, like a tool breaking or a bad part, the stations upstream use up their buffering capacity and stop one after another. But the whole line doesn't have to stop for a one minute tool change. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas
    - csours 9y ago
      Disclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are solely my own. This is enormously context-sensitive, but it is not at all odd to have a buffer with several hours worth of vehicles in auto assembly, for example between shops (ie between body and paint and between paint and final assembly). As you get closer to the end of the line, the buffers get much smaller, but you may have a 5 minute buffer between the last few lines in Final Assembly. One other thing to point out here; The two main styles of conveyance in vehicle assembly are fixed position stop and stop stations (also known by many other names). - Fixed position stop is what you call rigid line, and it is used where humans work on cars. The conveyor runs at a constant, slow speed through constant size work areas called footprints, such that each worker gets about a minute or so to do a set of assembly tasks. Humans can attach parts as the vehicle moves down the line. With fixed position stop, there is no buffer as the vehicle carriers are physically connected to a conveyor chain. - Stop stations are used where robots work on vehicles. It is very difficult to get a robot to work on a moving vehicle (but possible). Generally these conveyors move about twice as fast as the rigid stations, but all work is done while the vehicle is stopped. Also, each vehicle moves independently between stop stations as fast as the conveyor can move, and there is some buffering between each station. > 20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large supermarket. Yes, but it's in a mezzanine above the work area.
- sjm-lbm 9y ago
  Doesn't the fact that the hackathon is already happening, but we (even in this community) are only now learning about it pretty much answer this question?
- netsharc 9y ago
  If it's external.. wouldn't it attract a lot of competitors? "Hello I'm Hans from Aud... Augsburg!" "Ah you're German too? I mean, my grandmother is German, oh look, see my pen? She gave me a stationery set that says Mercedes Benz on it!".
crb002 9y ago
Said it once, will say it again. Elon needs to provide stochastic simulations of his production line with realistic failure rates of each component. Understand where those high failures are and build in the same redundancy he does to the Model 3's frame.
- WhompingWindows 9y ago
  Is it just failure rates, though? He's said in the past a lot of it that they have 30,000 parts and a massive number of suppliers to rely on. For instance, with the model X doors, there were substantial delays because their contractor said it could be done hydraulically, but it wasn't completed, so then Tesla did it itself with electromechanical systems. To me, that massive delay wouldn't be captured by your production line simulation.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    some youtube video about the latest conf call said they redesigned the parts to reduce and streamline everything.. but anyway your poind holds
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    Managing suppliers/supply chains, testing their designs, integrating their designs into yours is the major challenge for a manufacturer, IMO. It goes well beyond the challenge of testing and verifying elements of your own design.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >the same redundancy he does to the Model 3's frame. If Ray Charles tried to shoot the broad side of the barn he's probably hit the pinch welds on a Tesla in the next town over. Superfluous part numbers (like their multi-piece wheel wells) and material excess is the kind of redundancy the Model 3 has the most of. Tesla doesn't make efficiently designed cars any more than Juicero made efficient juicers. Tesla has carved out a market niche that they won't easily be unseated from but efficient design is not that niche. You can simulate and model all you want. If you don't have the expertise in house you won't be able to get much value out of it.
WhompingWindows 9y ago
I love electric vehicles, however Electrek is a very pro-Tesla "news" source. The owner is a massive fan and finds the most positive spin for Tesla on essentially every story. It's sort of sad that it's one of the main electric vehicle news sources on the web now, since it's basically Fred's I Love Tesla blog.
- pooya13 9y ago
  I actually read most of their stories and have not yet seen a story that has turned out to be false. Mean while almost every story / comment posted on Hacker News will receive up votes if it has a negative spin and down vote if it has a positive spin, no matter the content. Yes Elekrek is filled with Tesla fanboys but HN is also filled with Tesla haters. See my comment for example of down voted positive comments with no counter argument offered.
  - prklmn 9y ago
    Just because something isn’t false doesn’t mean it’s not highly biased.
    - baq 9y ago
      Biased and true is better than biased and false. Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.
      - Someone1234 9y ago
        "Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better."
        eganist 9y ago
        > Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it. and > Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better. are not analogous. Now if the line were instead something like > Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring less-biased (or efforts to reduce bias). then you'd be onto something, but as it stands, what you've got there is a false equivalence.
jes 9y ago
The headline is evocative of the introduction to the book "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt. That book was transformative for me.
aerovistae 9y ago
Okay, I don’t know what else to say at this point: HN needs a filter function so users can screen out content. Said it yesterday, say it again today: I’m fucking sick of seeing every tiny little irrelevant thing involving Tesla in the news. It’s STUPID. I bet google’s holding a hackathon to fix something too but I don’t see 45 upvotes on that....in fact nobody’s even writing about it. This is just clickbait bullshit.
- quickben 9y ago
  Having a filter would improve the feed a lot for me. Excluding Google/golang spam would make this site a lot more enjoyable.
- icebraining 9y ago
  HN is on the web, which until the copyright vultures get their way, it's still a platform which the user can mold quite freely. There's no need to beg the site owners for that feature. Ex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611
lechiffre10 9y ago
This doesn't inspire too much confidence, Tesla at one point asked for volunteers to ramp up Model 3 production and now a hackathon to solve a bottleneck. We get they burn cash like there's no tomorrow ( pun?) but this reeks of desperation. He should at least pay the winners.
- ranit 9y ago
  From the article: > A hackathon is a sprint event where programmers are invited to compete in fixing a problem or creating a product in a short period of time with prize money for the highest performing participants.
- hahamrfunnyguy 9y ago
  Seems like a better way to solve the problem than doing nothing, or continuing on business as usual.
  - lechiffre10 9y ago
    If rewarded accordingly I agree. But the fact he could get a HUGE payout if certain milestones are met and has the nerve to not only ask for volunteers but now for programmers to fix his issues for free is ridiculous. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-earn-55-billion-at-tesla-with-new-pay-proposal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-earn-55-bill...
    - legohead 9y ago
      Is the hackathon not during work hours?
    - mikeash 9y ago
      How is this different from any other situation where an employee contributes to the company and the CEO benefits from their results? The pay disparity between workers and executives is important and worth discussing, but what makes this particular example of it worth pointing out?
isuckatcoding 9y ago
“Hackathon” - oh weee I’d love to work 100+ hours to “win” the prize. This isn’t worker exploitation or overworking at all. /s
otempomores 9y ago
Wish they would flesh out the problems. Guess its the usual mix of overcrowding and objects out of reach. Also badly designed subgroup that make long linear workingsteps necessary. Also robot not as self controlled actor slaved to a plc as a nearly remote controlled actuator and off they go.
walshemj 9y ago
I assume Elon meant an internal hackathon here I doubt anyone with the skills needed is going to work for peanuts

85 points by evo_9 9y ago

Any news on whether the hackathon is internal or external? If it's come-all-takers, it looks like Tesla is airing the unspoken point of hackathons (to provide the company with unpaid innovation). A bold move... edit: is, it's going on as we speak

crb002 9y ago
Even simple things like having two robot arms for the same task with one idle but ready in case the other fails; or being able to electronically label some assemblies as rejects and no-op everything on the down the line until they hit an eject point. Ability to re-insert them again later. On-off ramps with even 20 minutes of buffer capacity would be extremely helpful in building redundancy into the system.
- Animats 9y ago
  20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large supermarket. Buffering space is a big cost. Here's a Coca-Cola bottling plant.[1] This one has an extremely low employee count. It's mostly buffering space. That gives employees time to move to the trouble spot and deal with problems. Since Coca-Cola has been at this a while, they must need all that buffering. In an auto final assembly plant, you don't have the luxury of big buffers. On a rigid line, there's no buffering at all - if any station stops, the whole line must stop. That leads to quality problems - if someone drops a bolt, that bolt never gets inserted. A few seconds of buffering between stations helps. That's what Toyota's kanban system introduced. If you watch videos of Toyota production lines, they have a big timer showing the cycle time of the last cycle. It's not always the same. Sometimes a cycle takes a few seconds longer. If something goes wrong, like a tool breaking or a bad part, the stations upstream use up their buffering capacity and stop one after another. But the whole line doesn't have to stop for a one minute tool change. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas
  - csours 9y ago
    Disclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are solely my own. This is enormously context-sensitive, but it is not at all odd to have a buffer with several hours worth of vehicles in auto assembly, for example between shops (ie between body and paint and between paint and final assembly). As you get closer to the end of the line, the buffers get much smaller, but you may have a 5 minute buffer between the last few lines in Final Assembly. One other thing to point out here; The two main styles of conveyance in vehicle assembly are fixed position stop and stop stations (also known by many other names). - Fixed position stop is what you call rigid line, and it is used where humans work on cars. The conveyor runs at a constant, slow speed through constant size work areas called footprints, such that each worker gets about a minute or so to do a set of assembly tasks. Humans can attach parts as the vehicle moves down the line. With fixed position stop, there is no buffer as the vehicle carriers are physically connected to a conveyor chain. - Stop stations are used where robots work on vehicles. It is very difficult to get a robot to work on a moving vehicle (but possible). Generally these conveyors move about twice as fast as the rigid stations, but all work is done while the vehicle is stopped. Also, each vehicle moves independently between stop stations as fast as the conveyor can move, and there is some buffering between each station. > 20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large supermarket. Yes, but it's in a mezzanine above the work area.
sjm-lbm 9y ago
Doesn't the fact that the hackathon is already happening, but we (even in this community) are only now learning about it pretty much answer this question?
netsharc 9y ago
If it's external.. wouldn't it attract a lot of competitors? "Hello I'm Hans from Aud... Augsburg!" "Ah you're German too? I mean, my grandmother is German, oh look, see my pen? She gave me a stationery set that says Mercedes Benz on it!".

crb002 9y ago

Said it once, will say it again. Elon needs to provide stochastic simulations of his production line with realistic failure rates of each component. Understand where those high failures are and build in the same redundancy he does to the Model 3's frame.

WhompingWindows 9y ago
Is it just failure rates, though? He's said in the past a lot of it that they have 30,000 parts and a massive number of suppliers to rely on. For instance, with the model X doors, there were substantial delays because their contractor said it could be done hydraulically, but it wasn't completed, so then Tesla did it itself with electromechanical systems. To me, that massive delay wouldn't be captured by your production line simulation.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  some youtube video about the latest conf call said they redesigned the parts to reduce and streamline everything.. but anyway your poind holds
- wyldfire 9y ago
  Managing suppliers/supply chains, testing their designs, integrating their designs into yours is the major challenge for a manufacturer, IMO. It goes well beyond the challenge of testing and verifying elements of your own design.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>the same redundancy he does to the Model 3's frame. If Ray Charles tried to shoot the broad side of the barn he's probably hit the pinch welds on a Tesla in the next town over. Superfluous part numbers (like their multi-piece wheel wells) and material excess is the kind of redundancy the Model 3 has the most of. Tesla doesn't make efficiently designed cars any more than Juicero made efficient juicers. Tesla has carved out a market niche that they won't easily be unseated from but efficient design is not that niche. You can simulate and model all you want. If you don't have the expertise in house you won't be able to get much value out of it.

WhompingWindows 9y ago

I love electric vehicles, however Electrek is a very pro-Tesla "news" source. The owner is a massive fan and finds the most positive spin for Tesla on essentially every story. It's sort of sad that it's one of the main electric vehicle news sources on the web now, since it's basically Fred's I Love Tesla blog.

pooya13 9y ago
I actually read most of their stories and have not yet seen a story that has turned out to be false. Mean while almost every story / comment posted on Hacker News will receive up votes if it has a negative spin and down vote if it has a positive spin, no matter the content. Yes Elekrek is filled with Tesla fanboys but HN is also filled with Tesla haters. See my comment for example of down voted positive comments with no counter argument offered.
- prklmn 9y ago
  Just because something isn’t false doesn’t mean it’s not highly biased.
  - baq 9y ago
    Biased and true is better than biased and false. Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.
    - Someone1234 9y ago
      "Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better."
      - eganist 9y ago
        > Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it. and > Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better. are not analogous. Now if the line were instead something like > Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring less-biased (or efforts to reduce bias). then you'd be onto something, but as it stands, what you've got there is a false equivalence.

jes 9y ago

The headline is evocative of the introduction to the book "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt. That book was transformative for me.

aerovistae 9y ago

Okay, I don’t know what else to say at this point: HN needs a filter function so users can screen out content. Said it yesterday, say it again today: I’m fucking sick of seeing every tiny little irrelevant thing involving Tesla in the news. It’s STUPID. I bet google’s holding a hackathon to fix something too but I don’t see 45 upvotes on that....in fact nobody’s even writing about it. This is just clickbait bullshit.

quickben 9y ago
Having a filter would improve the feed a lot for me. Excluding Google/golang spam would make this site a lot more enjoyable.
icebraining 9y ago
HN is on the web, which until the copyright vultures get their way, it's still a platform which the user can mold quite freely. There's no need to beg the site owners for that feature. Ex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611

lechiffre10 9y ago

This doesn't inspire too much confidence, Tesla at one point asked for volunteers to ramp up Model 3 production and now a hackathon to solve a bottleneck. We get they burn cash like there's no tomorrow ( pun?) but this reeks of desperation. He should at least pay the winners.

ranit 9y ago
From the article: > A hackathon is a sprint event where programmers are invited to compete in fixing a problem or creating a product in a short period of time with prize money for the highest performing participants.
hahamrfunnyguy 9y ago
Seems like a better way to solve the problem than doing nothing, or continuing on business as usual.
- lechiffre10 9y ago
  If rewarded accordingly I agree. But the fact he could get a HUGE payout if certain milestones are met and has the nerve to not only ask for volunteers but now for programmers to fix his issues for free is ridiculous. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-earn-55-billion-at-tesla-with-new-pay-proposal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-earn-55-bill...
  - legohead 9y ago
    Is the hackathon not during work hours?
  - mikeash 9y ago
    How is this different from any other situation where an employee contributes to the company and the CEO benefits from their results? The pay disparity between workers and executives is important and worth discussing, but what makes this particular example of it worth pointing out?

isuckatcoding 9y ago

“Hackathon” - oh weee I’d love to work 100+ hours to “win” the prize. This isn’t worker exploitation or overworking at all. /s

otempomores 9y ago

Wish they would flesh out the problems. Guess its the usual mix of overcrowding and objects out of reach. Also badly designed subgroup that make long linear workingsteps necessary. Also robot not as self controlled actor slaved to a plc as a nearly remote controlled actuator and off they go.

walshemj 9y ago

I assume Elon meant an internal hackathon here I doubt anyone with the skills needed is going to work for peanuts