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I have visited the Toyota factory in Ontario, Canada. What stood out to me was how little people was involved, literally everything was automated and the only l

I have visited the Toyota factory in Ontario, Canada. What stood out to me was how little people was involved, literally everything was automated and the only labour people were doing was testing the cars by driving it (or even just checking the colour) when it came out or standby mechanics to maintain the machines. I see Tesla as incorporating more labour than regular cars but not extensively as modern car plants have pretty much eliminated the need for humans.

dogma1138 8y ago
Labor does not mean only people but the cost of assembly. Robots aren’t free they need to be maintained by highly skilled and in the current market also highly paid workers and theya aren’t free to run either. They have expensive consumeables and they need to undergo constant maintenance for even basic things as maintaining their zero.
- forkLding 8y ago
  Yea I included the mechanics who do maintenance in my paragraphs when I was talking about labourers, you might have to reread that part, when I was there, they largely hang out in one roofed area within and arent utilized as heavily as you expect. I think from a layman perspective we expect mechanics to be constantly busy and fixing and maintaining but they only fix if there are issues and with a company like Toyota the realization is that they're so experienced and familiar that the maintenance costs reduce with time simply because its cheaper and much more efficient that way and because its much easier to fix the same issues. As well, a mechanic that is fully utilized is actually a bad thing as that means you plant is constantly being shut down to fix things and not producing cars, as thats how you fix things in a TPS system. Also car plants nowadays are wonderfully automated, the materials were being shipped around using driverless carts with sensors and music to alert people or things in their way. Its also suprisingly devoid of human noise aside from the machines clanking.
justin66 8y ago
That is rather interesting, since Tesla is famous for wanting to turn the whole assembly line into a giant robot, but Toyota is still in a cycle of being very open to using more people. There's plenty about this in the automotive and business press, the following isn't a great example. https://qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-replacing-robots-with-humans/ https://qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-r...

dogma1138 8y ago

Labor does not mean only people but the cost of assembly. Robots aren’t free they need to be maintained by highly skilled and in the current market also highly paid workers and theya aren’t free to run either. They have expensive consumeables and they need to undergo constant maintenance for even basic things as maintaining their zero.

forkLding 8y ago
Yea I included the mechanics who do maintenance in my paragraphs when I was talking about labourers, you might have to reread that part, when I was there, they largely hang out in one roofed area within and arent utilized as heavily as you expect. I think from a layman perspective we expect mechanics to be constantly busy and fixing and maintaining but they only fix if there are issues and with a company like Toyota the realization is that they're so experienced and familiar that the maintenance costs reduce with time simply because its cheaper and much more efficient that way and because its much easier to fix the same issues. As well, a mechanic that is fully utilized is actually a bad thing as that means you plant is constantly being shut down to fix things and not producing cars, as thats how you fix things in a TPS system. Also car plants nowadays are wonderfully automated, the materials were being shipped around using driverless carts with sensors and music to alert people or things in their way. Its also suprisingly devoid of human noise aside from the machines clanking.

justin66 8y ago

That is rather interesting, since Tesla is famous for wanting to turn the whole assembly line into a giant robot, but Toyota is still in a cycle of being very open to using more people. There's plenty about this in the automotive and business press, the following isn't a great example. https://qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-replacing-robots-with-humans/ https://qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-r...