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'A Lot of Hoped-for Automation Was Counterproductive', Remembers Elon Musk (bloomberg.com)
Thursday Elon Musk gave a surprisingly candid interview about Tesla's massive push to increase production of Model 3 sedans to 5,000 a week. An anonymous reader quotes Musk's remarks to Bloomberg:
I spent almost the entire time in the factory the final week, and yeah, it was essentially three months with a tiny break of like one day that I wasn't there. I was wearing the same clothes for five days. Yeah, it was really intense. And everybody else was really intense, too... I think we had to prove that we could make 5,000 cars in a week -- 5,000 Model 3s and at the same time make 2,000 S and X's, so essentially show that we could make 7,000 cars. We had to prove ourselves. The number of people who thought we would actually make it is very tiny, like vanishingly small. There was suddenly the credibility of the company, my credibility, you know, the credibility of the whole team. It was like, "Can you actually do this or not?"
There were a lot of issues that we had to address in order to do it. You know, we had to create the new general assembly line in basically less than a month -- to create it and get to an excess of a 1,000-cars-a-week rate in like four weeks... A lot of the hoped-for automation was counterproductive. It's not like we knew it would be bad, because why would we buy a ticket to hell...? A whole bunch of the robots are turned off, and it was reverted to a manual station because the robots kept faulting out. When the robot faults out -- like the vision system can't figure out how to put the object in -- then you've got to reset the system. You've got to manually seat the components. It stops the whole production line while you sort out why the robot faults out.
When the interviewer asks why that happens, Musk replies, "Because we were huge idiots and didn't know what we were doing. That's why."
There were a lot of issues that we had to address in order to do it. You know, we had to create the new general assembly line in basically less than a month -- to create it and get to an excess of a 1,000-cars-a-week rate in like four weeks... A lot of the hoped-for automation was counterproductive. It's not like we knew it would be bad, because why would we buy a ticket to hell...? A whole bunch of the robots are turned off, and it was reverted to a manual station because the robots kept faulting out. When the robot faults out -- like the vision system can't figure out how to put the object in -- then you've got to reset the system. You've got to manually seat the components. It stops the whole production line while you sort out why the robot faults out.
When the interviewer asks why that happens, Musk replies, "Because we were huge idiots and didn't know what we were doing. That's why."
At this point it does not even matter anymore whether you are right or not. Your behavior is a huge red flag. Nothing you produce will ever touch my systems for that reason alone.
I guess I am hardly alone in this.
I prefer filler words such as "like" as well as the occasional "erm" from people who actually think about what they have to say, over people who talk and talk and talk with practiced ease but without actually saying anything. Too many interviews are just lips making noise with years of media training behind it, and an interviewer unable to break through that barrier. That's why these interviews with Musk are unusual and refreshing: he actually has something to say, speaks his mind, and isn't as prone to evade questions.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Many years ago (keep this in mind - things may have changed) I worked at an European company, designing and building production plants for the automotive industry, especially for the body shops.
A typical production line for European mid-sized cars had a theoretical capacity of fifty (50) car bodies per hour - that would be at 100% efficiency, actual yeld was lower but not much. A typical production facility for non-premium class cars had two production lines running in parallel on two eight-hour shifts per day (third shift for clean-up and maintenance), five days a week. 50*2*8*2*5=8000 car bodies per week at 100% efficiency (as I said, actual yeld was something less than that). Of course, most manufacturers had (still have) more than one facility running.
Premium / luxury production lines are usually smaller than that, of course. Think Ferrari.
I hope this is of interest.
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
happening to cash out of the dot-com bubble at the right time is why he is rich