Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Lego Factory
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a fascinating report and video tour inside the Lego factory, which is full of robots and controlled by a mainframe. 'This video shows something that very few people have had the opportunity to witness: the inside of the Lego factory, with no barriers or secrets. I filmed every step in the creation of the brick. From the raw granulate stored in massive silos to the molding machines to the gigantic storage cathedrals to the decoration and packaging warehouses, you will be able to see absolutely everything, including the most guarded secret of the company: the brick molds themselves.'"
The big secret: Lego Mindstorm robots are running the factory.
I, for one, welcome our new bumpy-headed overlords.
The big deal (according to someone at the company in an NPR interview, I believe) is repeat customers. Since their product is so durable, customers tend to buy until they have enough then use them for a couple generations (I know my legos will be used by my kids someday). When a product is so durable, you need to charge a little more for it in order to ensure your company's survival.
Actually, making molds is a pretty complex process. The simpler Lego designs shouldn't be too bad, but they are often 'deep' shapes which can have problems.
Designing a mold to cast properly, without visible mold lines, is a definite science.
Not true. They just won a lawsuit against Megablocks about this 3 years ago. http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/trial-procedure-suits-claims/4999649-1.html
That's not really true. Process engineers have a lot to do with the quality of plastic products. Those big injection molding machines are really finicky about temperature and pressure, and the molds have to be designed very well. Otherwise you'd get legos that shrink too much, or not enough, or worst of all - not consistently.
Legos have to strike a delicate balance between fitting too tightly and too loosely... it's actually amazing that all of the sets over the years are pretty darn compatible. It's the rare Lego that simply falls off.
Plastic quality is also important, but presumably they are just buying some standard high-quality type. (Maybe not?)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I also find it surprising that advanced manufacturing technology hasn't driven down the price of Legos. However, this article gives some insight into the business side of Lego and shows that the prices aren't simply inflated out of greed.
Really... plastics shrink as they're cooled from the mold, and how much shrinkage you get also depends on how much plastic is there. Now notice that all your long Lego trusses are exactly dead straight. Even the ones that are 20, 30, or 40 years old. And the 40 year old pieces interlock perfectly with the brand new ones. That says a lot for the plastics composition too. Go check out the dash on a 40 year old Dodge and see how much it's changed dimensionally. It's all in the details.
Less is more.
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about plastic injection molding, but assumes it's simple. (In typical slashdot fashion.)
it's actually amazing that all of the sets over the years are pretty darn compatible. It's the rare Lego that simply falls off.
Very good point, I have some nearly 20 year old legos that fit with brand new ones like they were from the same batch. I suppose I took it for granted without really thinking how much work would go into this level of quality control.
None of which alone explain it, but can add up.
They are very particular about the ABS they use - it has to be metals-free, historically not very easy - which used to be supplied only by Bayer (until around 1998, LEGO US was still shipping ABS pellets from Germany to Enfield CT - one worth-his-weight-in-bricks engineer got GE Pittsfield MA to spec the plastic, saving them some bucks).
The bricks IIRC are build to a tolerance of 3/1000ths of an inch. Look at bricks and try and find the gates (where the plastic in injected and detaches from the flashing) or the knock-outs (where a part of the molding machine pushed the brick out - typically these are obvious kludgy bits of a plastic toy, in LEGOs they are all but invisible) The LEGO engineers used to smile a lot as other companies' engineers searched, often in vain, for these tell-tale machine marks.
In Enfield they have a lego-brick knight statue commemorating their ISO 9001 certification. Not so sure how many toy factories hit that mark.
For a long time the place was rather labor-intensive. A 1990 tour had more people on the packing line and a series of lights to alert someone on the floor (who had to be in sight of the molding machines) to a malfunction. The same tour in 1996 this was replaced by a pager system. In all that automation, they prided themselves on never letting someone go from the factory when their role was replaced by a machine -they always had something new to be done based on a lot of R&D. Haven't been there since 2000, but I understand that pattern was pretty much unbroken.
At least in Enfield, the factory was nearly as as spotless as the HQ office buildings. I doubt every plastic-toy-cranking factory elsewhere in the world has that level of upkeep, and it's not cheap.
Making the rafts of tie-in toys means paying royalties to Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. While base sets might cheaper at WalMart now than they were at a boutique toy shops a few years back, the brand name additions likely helped keep prices off the bottom.
Enfield CT likely isn't the cheapest labor market around, which explains why, sadly, a year ago the last nut and bolt of the factory were shipped off to Mexico. Blasted sad. A great bunch of people up there.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
They still have the mixed bag packs, technics sets, etc. - it's just that most toy stores don't carry them. There's more money to be made in selling the smaller (less shelf real estate) movie-licensed themed sets (presumably better selling for younger children, the target market).
Amazon.com has a fabulous selection, and I'm sure with a little searching you could find an online retailer which had an even better selection with the same quality (or better) customer reviews.
I bought a Technics front-loader from them last Christmas when I needed some cheering up and was pleased that the quality was as high as ever, the instructions were just as graphic and cleanly presented, and the process was just as mystifying until it all came together.
It filled me with that same glee of discovery and revelation that I'm sure anybody who remembers Lego from their childhood knows.
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.