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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."
For a large automation project like this, it's better to start with something you know works. That is, a human assembly line (or a mix like all factories have these days). Then instead of redesigning the whole thing from scratch, replace one humn component at a time. Then you have minimal risk. (That may notbe the best way to do it, but it is a way that works)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't like censorship, but seriously isn't it about time Slashdot took some measures to actively block this spamming cunt!
I think only Musk and his fanboys believed that they were smarter than the countless production engineers in 120 year old trillion dollar auto industry.
You are mixing up long-term success (visionary) with short-term success (being a huge idiot sometimes). But you probably did that on purpose and are just trolling. Well, I like to feed sometimes ;) I have karma to burn.
If you can't be a huge fucking idiot sometimes you will not accomplish anything in life. It's when we naively make our greatest mistakes, we grow the most as a human being. The point is, learning and not making the same mistake again.
Do you know anyone that can operate an automatic assembly-line from birth, like it's in their DNA, other than its own digestive tract? No? Indeed, didn't think so. Eating and shitting all over the place comes naturally, as we see often enough here in the comments. The rest we have to learn. Sometimes we can learn from others, but if we want to do something innovative, we have to learn the hard way. That means being huge idiots until you know how to do it right.
If you think you can do better than Musk, prove it to the world, or forever hold your peace.
If you didn't reply to him, I wouldn't even have known he was there. So maybe it's time we start banning people who reply to spam?
Ironically, that character flaw is also what has allowed him to succeed in breaking into markets the world thought he could never enter (upsetting established auto manufacturers with a tech electric startup, reusable rockets stealing market share from the Lockheeds of the world).
So maybe we ought to write it as “flaw” with the quotes instead.
You are mixing up long-term success (visionary) with short-term success (being a huge idiot sometimes). But you probably did that on purpose and are just trolling. Well, I like to feed sometimes ;) I have karma to burn.
If you can't be a huge fucking idiot sometimes you will not accomplish anything in life. It's when we naively make our greatest mistakes, we grow the most as a human being. The point is, learning and not making the same mistake again.
Do you know anyone that can operate an automatic assembly-line from birth, like it's in their DNA, other than its own digestive tract? No? Indeed, didn't think so. Eating and shitting all over the place comes naturally, as we see often enough here in the comments. The rest we have to learn. Sometimes we can learn from others, but if we want to do something innovative, we have to learn the hard way. That means being huge idiots until you know how to do it right.
If you think you can do better than Musk, prove it to the world, or forever hold your peace.
Well said.
It's so easy to never fail. Just never try anything and spend all your time criticizing others who do.
There would be no progress if you just replicated what other companies had done in the past.
New products made with new processes require you to not listen to the experienced people at some point. It's extremely difficult to tell when you need to listen and when you need to ignore. Tesla made a mistake here, but the mistake was definitely not that they were ignoring some of what GM had done previously, it's that they made a bad choice on which things to ignore and which not to ignore. They had to ignore some of it. GM produced and tanked the EV1. If Musk listened to all of GM's experience, there would be no Tesla at all.
Also GM's problems with automation 30 years ago might be a good thing to revisit, as technology has changed massively since then. A $5 Raspberry Pi is far more powerful than any computer they had back then. Robotics and automation has massively changed. Thinking it can be done better now is not radical.
I think it's a good sign here is that the mistake has been recognized and they owned it. It's the companies who think they can't make mistakes and shift the blame externally that cause massive problems in a vain attempt to be right.