
Tesla is holding a hackathon to fix two robot bottlenecks in Model 3 production - evo_9
https://electrek.co/2018/05/13/tesla-hackathon-robots-model-3-production/
======
WhompingWindows
I love electric vehicles, however Electrek is a very pro-Tesla "news" source.
The owner is a massive fan and finds the most positive spin for Tesla on
essentially every story. It's sort of sad that it's one of the main electric
vehicle news sources on the web now, since it's basically Fred's I Love Tesla
blog.

~~~
pooya13
I actually read most of their stories and have not yet seen a story that has
turned out to be false. Mean while almost every story / comment posted on
Hacker News will receive up votes if it has a negative spin and down vote if
it has a positive spin, no matter the content. Yes Elekrek is filled with
Tesla fanboys but HN is also filled with Tesla haters. See my comment for
example of down voted positive comments with no counter argument offered.

~~~
prklmn
Just because something isn’t false doesn’t mean it’s not highly biased.

~~~
baq
Biased and true is better than biased and false.

Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.

~~~
Someone1234
"Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better."

~~~
eganist
> Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.

and

> Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better.

are not analogous. Now if the line were instead something like

> Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring less-biased (or efforts to reduce
> bias).

then you'd be onto something, but as it stands, what you've got there is a
false equivalence.

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lainga
Any news on whether the hackathon is internal or external? If it's come-all-
takers, it looks like Tesla is airing the unspoken point of hackathons (to
provide the company with unpaid innovation). A bold move...

edit: _is_ , it's going on as we speak

~~~
crb002
Even simple things like having two robot arms for the same task with one idle
but ready in case the other fails; or being able to electronically label some
assemblies as rejects and no-op everything on the down the line until they hit
an eject point. Ability to re-insert them again later. On-off ramps with even
20 minutes of buffer capacity would be extremely helpful in building
redundancy into the system.

~~~
Animats
20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large
supermarket.

Buffering space is a big cost. Here's a Coca-Cola bottling plant.[1] This one
has an extremely low employee count. It's mostly buffering space. That gives
employees time to move to the trouble spot and deal with problems. Since Coca-
Cola has been at this a while, they must need all that buffering.

In an auto final assembly plant, you don't have the luxury of big buffers. On
a rigid line, there's no buffering at all - if any station stops, the whole
line must stop. That leads to quality problems - if someone drops a bolt, that
bolt never gets inserted. A few seconds of buffering between stations helps.
That's what Toyota's kanban system introduced. If you watch videos of Toyota
production lines, they have a big timer showing the cycle time of the last
cycle. It's not always the same. Sometimes a cycle takes a few seconds longer.
If something goes wrong, like a tool breaking or a bad part, the stations
upstream use up their buffering capacity and stop one after another. But the
whole line doesn't have to stop for a one minute tool change.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas)

~~~
csours
Disclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are solely my own.

This is enormously context-sensitive, but it is not at all odd to have a
buffer with several hours worth of vehicles in auto assembly, for example
between shops (ie between body and paint and between paint and final
assembly).

As you get closer to the end of the line, the buffers get much smaller, but
you may have a 5 minute buffer between the last few lines in Final Assembly.

One other thing to point out here; The two main styles of conveyance in
vehicle assembly are fixed position stop and stop stations (also known by many
other names).

\- Fixed position stop is what you call rigid line, and it is used where
humans work on cars. The conveyor runs at a constant, slow speed through
constant size work areas called footprints, such that each worker gets about a
minute or so to do a set of assembly tasks. Humans can attach parts as the
vehicle moves down the line. With fixed position stop, there is no buffer as
the vehicle carriers are physically connected to a conveyor chain.

\- Stop stations are used where robots work on vehicles. It is very difficult
to get a robot to work on a moving vehicle (but possible). Generally these
conveyors move about twice as fast as the rigid stations, but all work is done
while the vehicle is stopped. Also, each vehicle moves independently between
stop stations as fast as the conveyor can move, and there is some buffering
between each station.

> 20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large
> supermarket.

Yes, but it's in a mezzanine above the work area.

------
lechiffre10
This doesn't inspire too much confidence, Tesla at one point asked for
volunteers to ramp up Model 3 production and now a hackathon to solve a
bottleneck. We get they burn cash like there's no tomorrow ( pun?) but this
reeks of desperation. He should at least pay the winners.

~~~
hahamrfunnyguy
Seems like a better way to solve the problem than doing nothing, or continuing
on business as usual.

~~~
lechiffre10
If rewarded accordingly I agree. But the fact he could get a HUGE payout if
certain milestones are met and has the nerve to not only ask for volunteers
but now for programmers to fix his issues for free is ridiculous. Source:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-
earn-55-bill...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could-
earn-55-billion-at-tesla-with-new-pay-proposal.html)

~~~
mikeash
How is this different from any other situation where an employee contributes
to the company and the CEO benefits from their results?

The pay disparity between workers and executives is important and worth
discussing, but what makes this particular example of it worth pointing out?

~~~
azemetre
Well one, the employee is getting paid to do the duties their job asks for.
They aren't working for free.

Tesla/Musk appears to be following the model of massive greedy billion dollar
corporation that would rather take free work than appropriately compensate
workers/consultants.

There is a massive difference between BEING PAID and NOT BEING PAID when asked
to do work. Seeing how Musk overworks and underpays his workers I'm not
surprised by this move.

~~~
mikeash
Where do you get that these people aren’t being paid?

~~~
azemetre
From the User you were replying to: lechiffre10

Also if only the winners are being paid, what about everyone else? They've
invested just as much time and their contributions were still valued by Tesla.
This isn't Glengarry Glen Ross, these are real humans.

~~~
mikeash
Well where did _they_ get it from?

As far as I can tell, this “hackathon” is being done by employees on company
time, so I’m extremely confused.

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isuckatcoding
“Hackathon” - oh weee I’d love to work 100+ hours to “win” the prize. This
isn’t worker exploitation or overworking at all. /s

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jes
The headline is evocative of the introduction to the book "The Goal" by Eli
Goldratt. That book was transformative for me.

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crb002
Said it once, will say it again. Elon needs to provide stochastic simulations
of his production line with realistic failure rates of each component.
Understand where those high failures are and build in the same redundancy he
does to the Model 3's frame.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Is it just failure rates, though? He's said in the past a lot of it that they
have 30,000 parts and a massive number of suppliers to rely on. For instance,
with the model X doors, there were substantial delays because their contractor
said it could be done hydraulically, but it wasn't completed, so then Tesla
did it itself with electromechanical systems. To me, that massive delay
wouldn't be captured by your production line simulation.

~~~
wyldfire
Managing suppliers/supply chains, testing their designs, integrating their
designs into yours is _the_ major challenge for a manufacturer, IMO. It goes
well beyond the challenge of testing and verifying elements of your own
design.

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walshemj
I assume Elon meant an internal hackathon here I doubt anyone with the skills
needed is going to work for peanuts

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aerovistae
Okay, I don’t know what else to say at this point: HN needs a filter function
so users can screen out content.

Said it yesterday, say it again today: I’m fucking sick of seeing every tiny
little irrelevant thing involving Tesla in the news. It’s STUPID. I bet
google’s holding a hackathon to fix something too but I don’t see 45 upvotes
on that....in fact nobody’s even writing about it. This is just clickbait
bullshit.

~~~
icebraining
HN is on the web, which until the copyright vultures get their way, it's still
a platform which the user can mold quite freely. There's no need to beg the
site owners for that feature.

Ex:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611)

