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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

When he first announced that goal, his two top production people quit.[1] Now he has a guy from Audi heading up production.

Auto production lines usually produce about a car a minute. 500,000 cars a year is about two production lines running two shifts. In 2005, the NUMMI plant, which is where Tesla is now, produced 400,000 cars with 4,700 employees. Tesla is talking about reaching 9,300 employees. They do more than final assembly there, but still, that's a high headcount for an auto plant. Ford's Kentucky truck plant also produces about 400,000 units a year with about 4,500 employees.

[1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20160504/OEM02/160509943/2-t...

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Here is an interview with said Audi guy in a manufacturing industry journal, talking about the challenge of meeting the production goals, and how they're tackling it: http://www.mljournal-digital.com/meleadershipjournal/october...

It's an interesting read, and goes into more details about the "machine that builds the machine" concept that Musk has talked about recently. It gave me more confidence that Tesla might achieve a real leap forward in terms of productivity.

I read that and have zero confidence that there will be a leap forward in productivity.

Density of automation equipment is all well and good, but it comes at a price of being difficult to maintain. If a tool or a robot breaks in some way (and any FMEA will tell you about the myriad of ways that can happen) then people will need to get into the cell and fix it. If you need to remove a robot, gripper or fixture - well, that's going to be difficult if you've landlocked everything by packing the machinery in so densely.

Vision systems for handling are great idea, but they are a nightmare to set up and to keep clean, especially in a welding shop.

Robots that repair the looms of robots around them. Fantasy, and it will continue to be fantasy for a good while yet.

Pretty sure all factories have high ceilings so the track cranes overhead can remove any piece of machinery from the factory floor, piece by piece if necessary. At least that's what my Millwright buddy who has worked on power plants, canneries and paper mills has told me.

In car assembly lines there are often gantries, conveyor systems (accumulating and EMS), trunnions and other high level equipment that prevents the use of track cranes. First choice would be to extract heavy equipment by manitou or fork-lift, crane is a distant second best. It sounds as though Tesla aren't considering how to maintain or repair their model 3 line.

Why did people downvote you, it's an honest question? Anyway, I expect the Audi manu expert would consider this and make sure he doesn't design a system without that possibility.

Tesla doesn't need a major breakthrough in production technology. They're proposing to produce about as many cars as the NUMMI plant produced in its peak year. And Tesla has far more employees. Tesla's problem is going to be cost. They're trying to build a relatively fancy car at a low price. That's hard.

Tesla's big edge: they underpay their employees compared to other automakers. The workers are now talking to the UAW about organizing a union.[1] Musk sounds scared about this.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/tesla-emp...

Tesla does much more in-house when compared to other auto plants, they buy more individual components and raw material and less partially assembled parts. I'm told that many of auto plants that produce the complete vehicle do mainly integration work these days. Tesla's approach is different, so they require more hands, but pay considerably less for the upstream supplies flowing into the plant.

In the UK we call this a 'screwdriver operation' where they don't 'really make cars' but they just put a few bits together, pre-assembled elsewhere. This started with the Japanese auto manufacturers wanting to compete in Europe, the UK government gave the incentives to Nissan and Honda but the factories were 'screwdriver operations' according to sceptics.

It's called an assembly plant in the US. There's nothing inherently wrong with this and it can actually afford greater automation and efficiencies in a number of ways. You have the option of receiving prefabricated components from multiple sources. If you're doing built to order manufacturing you can slot in variations more easily of they're complete modules assembled identically.

The more parts in assembly there are, the harder it is to control quality. You have to trust that the 3rd party supplier is meeting the required spec in manufacture and that the parts are damaged in transit.

> The more parts in assembly there are, the harder it is to control quality.

Which is why they tend to move to larger modular components. Things like seats arrive preassembled and simply need to be inspected and installed. Inspection can happen off the assembly floor and managed without disrupting production.

> You have to trust that the 3rd party supplier is meeting the required spec in manufacture and that the parts are damaged in transit.

You don't have to rely on 3rd parties to run an assembly plant. Your assembly plant can be fed by your own manufacturing facilities. But if you do rely on 3rd parties, it's definitely possible and companies like Apple do it with great success.

> The more parts in assembly there are, the harder it is to control quality.

The quality of passenger cars is so, so much higher now than prior to the use of these methods. It seems like they've got the quality control processes taken care of to some extent.

This is not so different actually, and has been done in the past by other auto manufacturers (some may even still be doing this today). The Ford River Rouge plant is the best example I can think of with literal Iron Ore going in one side and finished cars rolling out the other.

Musk may have been inspired by this plant. http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-like-ford-plant...

Here's Tesla's supplier list.[1] Tesla makes the battery, motor, aluminum stampings, and plastic parts. They also now make their own seats and some of the circuit boards for the electronics. Everything else (steering, brakes, wheels, etc.) is outsourced. Makes sense; that stuff is standard.

[1] http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/tesla-info.j...

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