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People generally overestimate the difficulty of designing a product and underestimate the difficulty of designing the equipment, processes, and systems needed t

People generally overestimate the difficulty of designing a product and underestimate the difficulty of designing the equipment, processes, and systems needed to mass produce the product economically.

baq 7y ago
musk tweeeted a few years ago that "it isn't about the car, it's about the factory". he then proceeded to fail and redesign production due to overautomation, but the point stands and perhaps was stated in bold at that moment.
Gibbon1 7y ago
I think of it as a rule of five. Takes five times as much effort to design the production process as it does to design the product. And five times that to put it into production. The number five is fungible depending on volume and similarity to existing products. It's why a hobbyist in his garage can design a product but can't commercialize it.
nostrademons 7y ago
Is that true? There are a number of interesting corollaries if so, notably that China should get a lot more respect for extremely cheap mass-production of products, the U.S's position as "designer of products that are built elsewhere" is quite precarious, that software and other IP (where mass production is basically free) are basically the perfect businesses, and that services that can be provided without mass-producing a product will grow in importance. I could buy all 5 of those statements, but it's interesting that the combined effect of them would be to push people out of making things and into manipulating brains (which itself is a statement I could believe).
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  It is true, and some Chinese production lines are truly feats of engineering. However, it's a little tricky to determine whether this is really Chinese values and engineering or the values and engineering they have imported from other countries. There's a lot of production lines in China that produce nonfunctional goods. In the microelectronic and mechanical areas the strength of the Chinese market seems to be very, very lax IP law. While most of the interesting parts don't make it over to the western market, they have very featureful, accessible, and novel components that are made by cobbling together (potentially stolen or at least unlicensed) IP. Historically US manufacturing used to be the best cost/performance optimized and this is what helped win WWII.
- Merrill 7y ago
  It's my impression that Germany and Japan are leaders in producing the capital equipment needed to set up manufacturing, although the US is fairly capable in some areas. I think that China imports a lot of equipment from them and then integrates it into factory systems. You 5 statements are probably right with some qualification. For example, software mass production is basically free (actually just low cost) for apps distributed via the app stores. However, if you are selling software as a service at scale, setting up a cloud service with five 9s availability is complex and expensive.

baq 7y ago

musk tweeeted a few years ago that "it isn't about the car, it's about the factory". he then proceeded to fail and redesign production due to overautomation, but the point stands and perhaps was stated in bold at that moment.

Gibbon1 7y ago

I think of it as a rule of five. Takes five times as much effort to design the production process as it does to design the product. And five times that to put it into production. The number five is fungible depending on volume and similarity to existing products. It's why a hobbyist in his garage can design a product but can't commercialize it.

nostrademons 7y ago

Is that true? There are a number of interesting corollaries if so, notably that China should get a lot more respect for extremely cheap mass-production of products, the U.S's position as "designer of products that are built elsewhere" is quite precarious, that software and other IP (where mass production is basically free) are basically the perfect businesses, and that services that can be provided without mass-producing a product will grow in importance. I could buy all 5 of those statements, but it's interesting that the combined effect of them would be to push people out of making things and into manipulating brains (which itself is a statement I could believe).

snagglegaggle 7y ago
It is true, and some Chinese production lines are truly feats of engineering. However, it's a little tricky to determine whether this is really Chinese values and engineering or the values and engineering they have imported from other countries. There's a lot of production lines in China that produce nonfunctional goods. In the microelectronic and mechanical areas the strength of the Chinese market seems to be very, very lax IP law. While most of the interesting parts don't make it over to the western market, they have very featureful, accessible, and novel components that are made by cobbling together (potentially stolen or at least unlicensed) IP. Historically US manufacturing used to be the best cost/performance optimized and this is what helped win WWII.
Merrill 7y ago
It's my impression that Germany and Japan are leaders in producing the capital equipment needed to set up manufacturing, although the US is fairly capable in some areas. I think that China imports a lot of equipment from them and then integrates it into factory systems. You 5 statements are probably right with some qualification. For example, software mass production is basically free (actually just low cost) for apps distributed via the app stores. However, if you are selling software as a service at scale, setting up a cloud service with five 9s availability is complex and expensive.