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Is that actually true? My understanding is that there is still a lot of human labor necessarily baked in, and attempts to robotize everything largely have faile

Is that actually true? My understanding is that there is still a lot of human labor necessarily baked in, and attempts to robotize everything largely have failed for a multitude of reasons (Tesla most famously so), but the most unsolvable is that of flexibility to change something fundamentally on a dime.

njarboe 6y ago
Elon Musk said the thing that was really hard to automate was putting in wiring. Tesla has now developed a whole new type of wiring system that is much more amenable to automation.
- ancientworldnow 6y ago
  Tesla uses more workers per car in assembly than other major manufacturer. By a lot. They are not the people to look for in terms of automating auto assembly anecdotes despite their PR efforts.
  - anchpop 6y ago
    I googled but didn't see anything, source?
    - agustif 6y ago
      The german auto-makers like BMW / VW build their own robots for assembly, I would look up there.
      - njarboe 6y ago
        Tesla bought the german manufacturing automation company Grohmann Engineering in Jan. 2017, so there that also.
  - njarboe 6y ago
    Elon Musk spends a lot of money/effort not to get stuck in local maxima. I guess time will tell if Tesla's trying lots of new ideas works out for them.
ta76893547 6y ago
I work in manufacturing automation so I may be biased, but attempts to robotize the manufacturing of a product that's being iterated on continuously (Tesla) or automating the assembly of lots of low-volume products is always going to go poorly. Large car companies like GM or Ford hire automation companies to build automation equipment that meets a very specific spec for assembly steps, tolerances, rates, etc. They design components with ease of manufacturing as a significant factor. How something will be assembled is a constant consideration while designing. The product being run on these lines never really changes and human are only used when the the operations are so complex that the equipment doesn't pay for itself in (typically) 2 years. This is very rare, mostly people are only there to keep the machines filled with parts. In the sequence of design -> automate -> manufacture manufacture needs to be much larger than the others have good margins. You can't iterate on design without iterating on automate, so if you change the design a lot it's probably best to avoid trying to automate.

njarboe 6y ago

Elon Musk said the thing that was really hard to automate was putting in wiring. Tesla has now developed a whole new type of wiring system that is much more amenable to automation.

ancientworldnow 6y ago
Tesla uses more workers per car in assembly than other major manufacturer. By a lot. They are not the people to look for in terms of automating auto assembly anecdotes despite their PR efforts.
- anchpop 6y ago
  I googled but didn't see anything, source?
  - agustif 6y ago
    The german auto-makers like BMW / VW build their own robots for assembly, I would look up there.
    - njarboe 6y ago
      Tesla bought the german manufacturing automation company Grohmann Engineering in Jan. 2017, so there that also.
- njarboe 6y ago
  Elon Musk spends a lot of money/effort not to get stuck in local maxima. I guess time will tell if Tesla's trying lots of new ideas works out for them.

ta76893547 6y ago

I work in manufacturing automation so I may be biased, but attempts to robotize the manufacturing of a product that's being iterated on continuously (Tesla) or automating the assembly of lots of low-volume products is always going to go poorly. Large car companies like GM or Ford hire automation companies to build automation equipment that meets a very specific spec for assembly steps, tolerances, rates, etc. They design components with ease of manufacturing as a significant factor. How something will be assembled is a constant consideration while designing. The product being run on these lines never really changes and human are only used when the the operations are so complex that the equipment doesn't pay for itself in (typically) 2 years. This is very rare, mostly people are only there to keep the machines filled with parts. In the sequence of design -> automate -> manufacture manufacture needs to be much larger than the others have good margins. You can't iterate on design without iterating on automate, so if you change the design a lot it's probably best to avoid trying to automate.