Its usually called a lights out factory - and they some Japanese production facilities claim to run in this mode. Fanuc and Sony-Playstation comes to mind. ht

Its usually called a lights out factory - and they some Japanese production facilities claim to run in this mode. Fanuc and Sony-Playstation comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-YkFzWj6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-YkFzWj6o https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-sec... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing) My personal experience with robots and factory automation makes these claims rather dubious. There is always some stressed maintainer needed, at lest on standby. Factory equipment ages constantly and even "durable" parts, like the energy chains break regularly irregularly and it takes experience to detect and pre-emptively replace these. Until that "flickering" part is replaced, you have a constant series of increasingly occurring line stops. Including, product removal and NIO product increasing. Its possible to run a busy looking factory producing nothing but scrap for days. Broken products and its residue clog at unexpected places, a thousand parts later, the glue from the packaging it arrives in, makes the unwrapping machine sticky. Dust that comes in with the package, accumulates or static charges transport actually non floating foils to unexpected places. Nature finds a way, and spiders build there webs in front of light or capacity sensors. Even cats bring there young into some hidden cable spaces and thats a good thing, because they prevent rats from gnawing on the cables. Finally, the cheapest bidder wins and makes factory equipment everywhere, especially if its new, prone to breakage and failure. Resulting in the maintainers, partially rebuilding machines with self-made parts until they are sturdy. Until that stage is reached, machines can have quirks, like vibrations moving sensors of position. Also, the cheapest supplier also comes to plc software, resulting in horrific state-machines, waiting for ghost parts that left the system aeons ago and need careful massaging by maintainers to calm the enraged machine spirits (sometimes by hitting a robot with a wrench-> It opens the safety circuit, resetting the programs base state). Many robots are needed for very precise tasks, and need to re-calibrate in intervals to keep fulfilling there tasks. These error calibrations happen on top of the often used Non-parametric robot calibration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_calibration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_calibration. Its prone to move with temperature, moisture and alot of other parameters. Requiring a adaption of the programs used in industrial automation. Finally, there are "sales-failures", were the automation is sold, produced and then - never worked out. As in a dead "abandoned channel" of the assembly line. Its shown during factory tours as the "future" but the layer of dust and the missing traces of use give away, that it is not used in production. Usually its precision requirements that couldnt be met or would have required insane efforts. The Welding at Wendelstein comes to mind, were they created a "reference frame via laser triangulation" to prevent wrong welds, due to heat expansion of the material. Same insanity is usually applied to car manufacturing in germany, especially for the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaltma%C3%9F https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaltma%C3%9F obsessions, which regularly result in insane bake offs, with all kinds of robots, sensors and suppliers. That sort of machine just throws alarms, just from heavy equipment working nearby. No lights out there. Ever. Some guy sitting nearby, hitting the acknowledge and retry button after viewing up from the cellphone. So anal retentive quality control is a direct opponent of lights out, they want lights on all the time and fast detection of creeping in errors. So, its a nice goal, but until machines can handle all of the above. No.