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Granted, this was also in the context of mechanical engineering and manufacturing (cf. remarks in sibling comment), but Elon Musk has talked about his engineeri
by bschne 5y ago
Granted, this was also in the context of mechanical engineering and manufacturing (cf. remarks in sibling comment), but Elon Musk has talked about his engineering philosophy in five steps in a starbase tour/interview video:
1. Make the requirements less dumb
2. Try deleting the part or process
3. Simplify and optimize the design
4. Accelerate cycle time
5. Only then: Automate
I think this touches upon the same issues, namely that you shouldn't automate something if you don't have to, and even less if you don't need it in the first place.
- toss1 5y agoI also recently read Elon strongly criticizing/advising another company to 'get their factory [processes] working before building the big factory', which is the exact opposite of what said company was doing... Seems like Elon is correctly advising those guys to avoid a lot of pain (while not-so-subtly pointing out to everyone the big mistake being made). When being hired to automate a business process, I always tried to get/work with the client to explicitly streamline the paper/people version of the process first, and when they did a good job of it, the automation went well. I'd tell them that automating a mess just made a turbocharged mess, and merely guessing at what changes (implemented in automation) would be better was a crapshoot. If anything, I'd recommend making that approach a stronger requirement for taking on jobs.