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I've worked in manufacturing, been adjacent to manufacturing for most of my life, and written software for custom factory floor machines. That Beta wrench fact

I've worked in manufacturing, been adjacent to manufacturing for most of my life, and written software for custom factory floor machines. That Beta wrench factory wouldn't be hard for someone in the industry to stand up. It's is fairly low tech, little automation, and 95% off the shelf machines. Even the two possibly custom machines I saw in that video are built out of off the shelf components. This really isn't rocket science. You have a list of operations needed to make the product. You take that list and turn into machines, and time it takes to do each operation. If this is slower than your target time per part, you increase the number of machines on that operation (see all the tumblers in the wrench video). The US has many cities with deep industrial expertise. The US and China are roughly manufacturing output peers, even though the US has 1/5 the population. I know someone who stood up a production line in the US for some of the most complex pieces of metal ever made, involving hundreds of machine cells, (more many nations have made nuclear reactors than make this thing), and the production line side is something that's just isn't that hard. The planning is work sure, but it stuff that's been done before bazillions of times before. Standing up a manufacturing line is far less risky than creating new software - assuming you've got experienced people doing it.

oneTbrain23 3y ago
Maybe that person you know did that 20 years ago. USA right now has very little manufacturing plants like it used to have in the 50s to 80s. A lot got shifted out during Bush Jr time. I know a dozen machinists ended with Amazon after they lost their plant jobs around Obama's time.
edrxty 3y ago
Yeah, I second this. If anything, the process in the video is painfully under-optimized. It's not that hard to get to the point where you have a few machines in a lights out warehouse with a skeleton staff somewhere spitting these things out like a machine gun. I am curious what this legendary machined part referring to is though....?
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  >I am curious what this legendary machined part referring to is though....? Ultra silent propellers for submarines most probably.
  - chii 3y ago
    > submarines which makes all the difference. The military is willing to pay at a rate that civilians will not.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      Some civilians paid a lot for their submarine experience.
    - thumbuddy 3y ago
      Meanwhile there was that scandal about the steel being sold and used for us submarines was suboptimal. Erosion of standards at pretty much every level...
- Closi 3y ago
  > If anything, the process in the video is painfully under-optimized. It's not that hard to get to the point where you have a few machines in a lights out warehouse with a skeleton staff somewhere spitting these things out like a machine gun. This may very well be the trap that they fell into though - at $90 million that implies that they went head-first into scale and automation where actually it can sometimes be better to aim for something less automated as a version 1.0 (humans are more flexible than machinery)
ChatGTP 3y ago
The world’s largest tool company couldn’t figure out how to make a wrench. Stanley Black & Decker built a $90 million factory on the edge of Fort Worth, Texas, intending to burnish the Made-in-the-U.S.A. luster of the Craftsman brand by forging mechanics’ tools with unprecedented efficiency. But the automated system was a bust, and the tools that were supposed to be pumped out by the million are so hard to find that some consider them collector’s items. I'm not sure why I didn't like your comment but I think its because you're just hand waving the article away without responding to it at all? You take that list and turn into machines, and time it takes to do each operation. The article states they had trouble getting the expensive machines running, how do you respond to that? I mean, if the USA does posses all this expert manufacturing knowledge, then sure this wouldn't have been an insurmountable problem? To be fair, maybe the articles title would be better off "The USA couldn't workout how to build wrenches at an affordable price?", it sounds like the bean counters at Stanley had enough? Anyway, what's sad IMO is that when I was younger, I remember everyones disappointment that all the Stanley tools, and similar brands started making tools in China and it just seemed horrible and it kind of was, the tools sucked. Now, many Chinese tools seem quite good. Kind of idiotic that needs to be thrown away again and the USA has to figure out how to make good tools again...
- edrxty 3y ago
  I think the difference in what danielvf is saying and what the article is trying to say lies in some higher level phenomenon. Reading between the lines, every issue outlined in the article can be traced back to an abject failure of management to understand what they were making, and why they were making it. If I had to guess what the root cause was, the talent is there, but due to the current class structure of the US, nobody wanted to listen to the line machinists, grey-beards, and engineers (because they're dirty poors who didn't make it big via psychopathy so they must be dumb) so instead they listened to McKinsey or whoever they hired to actually run the project. I remember stories from my father about being an engineer at a big manufacturing facility. The culture was engineers were the people who did math all day, but if you actually wanted something done, ultimately you took your drawings down to the floor and found the longest, grayest beard you could and bent the knee until they agreed to make everything actually work. Fast forward to my first manufacturing job, I was tasked to improve a process, so I went out on the shop floor, started talking to the line guys, and then was promptly scolded by another engineer who told me, and I quote, "they're just manufacturing guys, don't give them enough rope to hang themselves with".
pjc50 3y ago
> This really isn't rocket science. You have a list of operations needed to make the product. You take that list and turn into machines, and time it takes to do each operation. This is like saying "all you need for an AI startup is to buy a load of graphics cards": there's some details in there which matter and require specialists to get right in surprising non-obvious ways. I agree with the comment below about this being mismanagement, though. Undoubtedly there are people who understand how to do this properly in the US, but they may not have found them or listened to them.
- bluGill 3y ago
  There are plenty of the needed specialists in the US. We do a lot of manufacturing, and so we have those people.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    Most of them aren't working those jobs man. And the next generation of them is not educated for it because they couldn't get a job with their degree to learn the trade and had to jump into tech or whoever could help them pay off their loans.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  I don't think I agree. AI is still a problem under very active development, where the theory is still underdeveloped and the way forward is uncertain. You can throw a lot of money at it and it still may not work well enough. Wrench manufacturing is a solved problem. We know what to make it from, how to design the parts, what tolerances are needed, how to make chunks of metal in that shape, etc. It's within the reach of a single decently successful youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FK-0zximxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FK-0zximxo The problem is less making the thing and more the commercial side of the operation: will it be cheap enough to compete? Will you be able to convince hardware stores to carry it?
- pwatsonwailes 3y ago
  Ops professional here. The parent is basically correct, and I'm not sure this is a fair take on what they're saying. To wit, the challenge isn't at the functional level, it's at the integration level. The individual elements are well understood, thoroughly developed and available at scale, but the integration for every factory is, on some level, going to have uniquely differentiated elements. The scoping and management of that is where the challenge tends to sit.

oneTbrain23 3y ago

Maybe that person you know did that 20 years ago. USA right now has very little manufacturing plants like it used to have in the 50s to 80s. A lot got shifted out during Bush Jr time. I know a dozen machinists ended with Amazon after they lost their plant jobs around Obama's time.

edrxty 3y ago

Yeah, I second this. If anything, the process in the video is painfully under-optimized. It's not that hard to get to the point where you have a few machines in a lights out warehouse with a skeleton staff somewhere spitting these things out like a machine gun. I am curious what this legendary machined part referring to is though....?

ReptileMan 3y ago
>I am curious what this legendary machined part referring to is though....? Ultra silent propellers for submarines most probably.
- chii 3y ago
  > submarines which makes all the difference. The military is willing to pay at a rate that civilians will not.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Some civilians paid a lot for their submarine experience.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    Meanwhile there was that scandal about the steel being sold and used for us submarines was suboptimal. Erosion of standards at pretty much every level...
Closi 3y ago
> If anything, the process in the video is painfully under-optimized. It's not that hard to get to the point where you have a few machines in a lights out warehouse with a skeleton staff somewhere spitting these things out like a machine gun. This may very well be the trap that they fell into though - at $90 million that implies that they went head-first into scale and automation where actually it can sometimes be better to aim for something less automated as a version 1.0 (humans are more flexible than machinery)

ChatGTP 3y ago

The world’s largest tool company couldn’t figure out how to make a wrench. Stanley Black & Decker built a $90 million factory on the edge of Fort Worth, Texas, intending to burnish the Made-in-the-U.S.A. luster of the Craftsman brand by forging mechanics’ tools with unprecedented efficiency. But the automated system was a bust, and the tools that were supposed to be pumped out by the million are so hard to find that some consider them collector’s items. I'm not sure why I didn't like your comment but I think its because you're just hand waving the article away without responding to it at all? You take that list and turn into machines, and time it takes to do each operation. The article states they had trouble getting the expensive machines running, how do you respond to that? I mean, if the USA does posses all this expert manufacturing knowledge, then sure this wouldn't have been an insurmountable problem? To be fair, maybe the articles title would be better off "The USA couldn't workout how to build wrenches at an affordable price?", it sounds like the bean counters at Stanley had enough? Anyway, what's sad IMO is that when I was younger, I remember everyones disappointment that all the Stanley tools, and similar brands started making tools in China and it just seemed horrible and it kind of was, the tools sucked. Now, many Chinese tools seem quite good. Kind of idiotic that needs to be thrown away again and the USA has to figure out how to make good tools again...

edrxty 3y ago
I think the difference in what danielvf is saying and what the article is trying to say lies in some higher level phenomenon. Reading between the lines, every issue outlined in the article can be traced back to an abject failure of management to understand what they were making, and why they were making it. If I had to guess what the root cause was, the talent is there, but due to the current class structure of the US, nobody wanted to listen to the line machinists, grey-beards, and engineers (because they're dirty poors who didn't make it big via psychopathy so they must be dumb) so instead they listened to McKinsey or whoever they hired to actually run the project. I remember stories from my father about being an engineer at a big manufacturing facility. The culture was engineers were the people who did math all day, but if you actually wanted something done, ultimately you took your drawings down to the floor and found the longest, grayest beard you could and bent the knee until they agreed to make everything actually work. Fast forward to my first manufacturing job, I was tasked to improve a process, so I went out on the shop floor, started talking to the line guys, and then was promptly scolded by another engineer who told me, and I quote, "they're just manufacturing guys, don't give them enough rope to hang themselves with".

pjc50 3y ago

> This really isn't rocket science. You have a list of operations needed to make the product. You take that list and turn into machines, and time it takes to do each operation. This is like saying "all you need for an AI startup is to buy a load of graphics cards": there's some details in there which matter and require specialists to get right in surprising non-obvious ways. I agree with the comment below about this being mismanagement, though. Undoubtedly there are people who understand how to do this properly in the US, but they may not have found them or listened to them.

bluGill 3y ago
There are plenty of the needed specialists in the US. We do a lot of manufacturing, and so we have those people.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  Most of them aren't working those jobs man. And the next generation of them is not educated for it because they couldn't get a job with their degree to learn the trade and had to jump into tech or whoever could help them pay off their loans.
dale_glass 3y ago
I don't think I agree. AI is still a problem under very active development, where the theory is still underdeveloped and the way forward is uncertain. You can throw a lot of money at it and it still may not work well enough. Wrench manufacturing is a solved problem. We know what to make it from, how to design the parts, what tolerances are needed, how to make chunks of metal in that shape, etc. It's within the reach of a single decently successful youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FK-0zximxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FK-0zximxo The problem is less making the thing and more the commercial side of the operation: will it be cheap enough to compete? Will you be able to convince hardware stores to carry it?
pwatsonwailes 3y ago
Ops professional here. The parent is basically correct, and I'm not sure this is a fair take on what they're saying. To wit, the challenge isn't at the functional level, it's at the integration level. The individual elements are well understood, thoroughly developed and available at scale, but the integration for every factory is, on some level, going to have uniquely differentiated elements. The scoping and management of that is where the challenge tends to sit.