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This intrigues me as it appears that Tesla is shipping their production mistakes to China. Things work differently in Michigan. Ford deliveries of the new F-1

by rmason 6y ago

This intrigues me as it appears that Tesla is shipping their production mistakes to China. Things work differently in Michigan. Ford deliveries of the new F-150 pickup trucks were held up as they shipped them to a lot outside the city where non-union help fixed the manufacturing defects. This is how the Big 3 operates fixes manufacturing defects.

analog31 6y ago
I wonder if there's some kind of monkey business going on with being able to maintain production and shipping numbers by "shipping" to some intermediate location. I grew up south of Detroit and remember a time period when Detroit Metro Airport was being used as a storage facility for acres and acres of excess new car inventory.
- myself248 6y ago
  It's more about keeping the line running. The line has a fixed throughput, and if it stops, it's hard to catch up. It's a stupendously expensive thing, staffed with a similarly-expensive complement of workers. Rework in the yard, on the other hand, is "soft", it can can be parallelized across as many workers as you can deploy, and they're usually contractors so you only bring them in when you need them. So if cars can be finished enough to roll 'em through end-of-line and then into yard hold, that's what you do. Clean it up as soon as possible of course, but whatever you do, don't stop the line.
garyfirestorm 6y ago
The official term is yard hold. This is nightmare for any engineer who’s part is responsible for yard hold. The vehicles are made, but not allowed to be shipped to a dealership. And everyone’s breathing down your neck unless the issue is fixed and they are allowed to leave. Issues can be anything from simple part squeaking to major design flaw. Each vehicle is test driven over a course before the manufacturing teams give it a ‘ship it’ tag. Door fit is a major issue for anyone and everyone. You simply cannot engineer doors to fit right, the assembly line guys always have to pull it, twist it and ‘align’ it. Tolerances exist, but the tighter you go the more parts you’ll reject, the more the cost of that part will be i.e. cost of your car will go up. Everything can be fixed and it’s never too late, the only problem is the cost of the fix. The later in production a fix is issued, the higher is the cost.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  How does Toyota do it? Their doors seem to fit.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    There are a lot of differences in the way Toyota manufactures cars compared to, say, typical US manufacturers and the differences are extensively studied in the literature. These techniques have been adapted to other fields, even software development. If you ever heard the term “kanban board”, well, that system is based on Toyota’s manufacturing system. One of the principles of Toyota’s process is that they will stop the assembly line to fix defects. This sounds simple, but other manufacturers will keep the assembly line moving, putting pressure on workers to complete their steps faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way One of the classic case studies is the Fremont Assembly plant in Fremont, California, which was run by GM until 1982 when it closed due to production problems. It was considered an embarrassment to the US automotive industry. Cars from the Fremont plant would come off the assembly line with major defects and they couldn’t be shipped to dealers. When I say “major defects”, think “this car can’t be shipped to a dealer, because it is missing a door.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Assembly Toyota needed to manufacture vehicles in North America and created a joint venture with GM called NUMMI, which reopened the plant in 1984—manufacturing both GM and Toyota vehicles. The existing workforce was sent to Japan to learn Toyota’s manufacturing system. The defect rate dropped dramatically after Toyota’s involvement. GM attempted to take what they learned from Toyota and bring it to other factories in the US, but failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI For various reasons, the plant shut down in 2010. It is now a Tesla plant.
    - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      > For various reasons, the plant shut down in 2010. It is now a Tesla plant. It probably wasn't intended that way, but that's such a beautiful irony. Similar to the dark humor of writing of Catch 22 and other books. Describe all the technological and managerial achievements and progresses of the system that is supposedly so much better than the one mentioned before (Tesla), and how it documentedly better, and produces so many good results and tolerating so many struggles, only to find out that it still was replaced by none other than Tesla. I guess they bet on the things that mattered even more.
propogandist 6y ago
For any interested in the China Gigafactory story > Giga-Sweatshop Meets Corporate Overlords: an Exclusive Look Into How Tesla China Runs its Shanghai Gigafactory 3 https://en.pingwest.com/a/8154 https://en.pingwest.com/a/8154

by rmason 6y ago

analog31 6y ago

I wonder if there's some kind of monkey business going on with being able to maintain production and shipping numbers by "shipping" to some intermediate location. I grew up south of Detroit and remember a time period when Detroit Metro Airport was being used as a storage facility for acres and acres of excess new car inventory.

myself248 6y ago
It's more about keeping the line running. The line has a fixed throughput, and if it stops, it's hard to catch up. It's a stupendously expensive thing, staffed with a similarly-expensive complement of workers. Rework in the yard, on the other hand, is "soft", it can can be parallelized across as many workers as you can deploy, and they're usually contractors so you only bring them in when you need them. So if cars can be finished enough to roll 'em through end-of-line and then into yard hold, that's what you do. Clean it up as soon as possible of course, but whatever you do, don't stop the line.

garyfirestorm 6y ago

The official term is yard hold. This is nightmare for any engineer who’s part is responsible for yard hold. The vehicles are made, but not allowed to be shipped to a dealership. And everyone’s breathing down your neck unless the issue is fixed and they are allowed to leave. Issues can be anything from simple part squeaking to major design flaw. Each vehicle is test driven over a course before the manufacturing teams give it a ‘ship it’ tag. Door fit is a major issue for anyone and everyone. You simply cannot engineer doors to fit right, the assembly line guys always have to pull it, twist it and ‘align’ it. Tolerances exist, but the tighter you go the more parts you’ll reject, the more the cost of that part will be i.e. cost of your car will go up. Everything can be fixed and it’s never too late, the only problem is the cost of the fix. The later in production a fix is issued, the higher is the cost.

beamatronic 6y ago
How does Toyota do it? Their doors seem to fit.
- klodolph 6y ago
  There are a lot of differences in the way Toyota manufactures cars compared to, say, typical US manufacturers and the differences are extensively studied in the literature. These techniques have been adapted to other fields, even software development. If you ever heard the term “kanban board”, well, that system is based on Toyota’s manufacturing system. One of the principles of Toyota’s process is that they will stop the assembly line to fix defects. This sounds simple, but other manufacturers will keep the assembly line moving, putting pressure on workers to complete their steps faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way One of the classic case studies is the Fremont Assembly plant in Fremont, California, which was run by GM until 1982 when it closed due to production problems. It was considered an embarrassment to the US automotive industry. Cars from the Fremont plant would come off the assembly line with major defects and they couldn’t be shipped to dealers. When I say “major defects”, think “this car can’t be shipped to a dealer, because it is missing a door.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Assembly Toyota needed to manufacture vehicles in North America and created a joint venture with GM called NUMMI, which reopened the plant in 1984—manufacturing both GM and Toyota vehicles. The existing workforce was sent to Japan to learn Toyota’s manufacturing system. The defect rate dropped dramatically after Toyota’s involvement. GM attempted to take what they learned from Toyota and bring it to other factories in the US, but failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI For various reasons, the plant shut down in 2010. It is now a Tesla plant.
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    > For various reasons, the plant shut down in 2010. It is now a Tesla plant. It probably wasn't intended that way, but that's such a beautiful irony. Similar to the dark humor of writing of Catch 22 and other books. Describe all the technological and managerial achievements and progresses of the system that is supposedly so much better than the one mentioned before (Tesla), and how it documentedly better, and produces so many good results and tolerating so many struggles, only to find out that it still was replaced by none other than Tesla. I guess they bet on the things that mattered even more.

propogandist 6y ago

For any interested in the China Gigafactory story > Giga-Sweatshop Meets Corporate Overlords: an Exclusive Look Into How Tesla China Runs its Shanghai Gigafactory 3 https://en.pingwest.com/a/8154 https://en.pingwest.com/a/8154