
Elon Musk announces plan to revolutionize factories - thesumofall
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shareholders-20160531-snap-story.html
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mevile
What's interesting about Musk is that he doesn't at all seem to be doing any
of this for the money. It doesn't seem like it's greed that motivates him, the
way you might think of other top CEOs. He's all about vision. He's an idealist
with competence and resources and for better or for worse, he will probably
have an impact on all of our lives. I would hope for the better, but idealism
and egocentrism can create a toxic mix. So far I love everything his companies
have done. I love watching the spacex videos. But we should judge him and his
companies based on their accomplishments and their actions and not on the PR
and media spectacles that surround him.

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dogma1138
To be fair I doubt any top CEO does it for the money, greed is a very poor
motivator.

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lgieron
What about the financial CEOs who, after the US government rescued their firms
with bailout, prompty paid themselves multimillion dollar bonuses with the
bailout money?

I think people change during the course of their life. While greed will not
probably motivate you enough to rise to the top (you need other drivers such
as ambition), if you've already made it to the top (and there's nowhere else
to go, you're already #1 by your own metrics), you can slowly morph into a
greedy bastard.

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sonium
As a student ~ 7 years ago i had a summer job at an Audi assembly line. At the
first place I worked there you had roughly one person every 10 or 15 meters or
so appart, mainly restacking the supplies for welding robots. So there was
really not that much left to automate. The other place I worked however was
more manual. My job was to connect the fuel lines, which took me about 2 days
to learn since it required some serious coordination effort with a weired
tool. I can see that they didn't automate this, because the location was at
that point hard to reach and they had about five different versions depending
on engine type. Maybe in the case of Tesla things are also easier to automate
since they are less customized then traditional cars (where you have a
plentora of options just for the engine alone).

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RealityVoid
Maybe one of the factors is "automating the automation" in that automation is
possible for many(most) of the processes, but there is a high cost to this
automation. Streamlining this into better building blocks might make it easier
to adapt than ever before. I have experience with car software and there are
many, many, maany ways things that could be improved over here.

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ianleeclark
In terms of your comment about "automating the automation" being not done due
to a high cost of the automation, in Economics we have something called
competitive advantage which gives explanation as to why we may use humans
rather than robots for tasks like these.

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PinguTS
The question here is: does he want to revolutionize his factories, which makes
a lot of sense? Or does he mean in general?

I mean, when I see his production, I see a lot of cars, which are moved around
on a robot to get in position to be able to work on them. That takes time.
That is not a series production.
[https://youtu.be/TuC8drQmXjg?t=5m33s](https://youtu.be/TuC8drQmXjg?t=5m33s)

Versus a real series production:
[https://youtu.be/dy3R4K5jHYc?t=7m59s](https://youtu.be/dy3R4K5jHYc?t=7m59s)
or here:
[https://youtu.be/tNQmXw_vX-g?t=3m4s](https://youtu.be/tNQmXw_vX-g?t=3m4s)

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restalis
The "real series production" presented in the last video-clips seems to
include a lot of intensive manual labor in those assembly lines. That in
itself should let you assume room for improvement. In the first video (@8:25)
there is a part involving two mechanical arms and a press, all moving pretty
slowly, i.e. with a lot of waiting. Why is that if the only possible
occurrences in there are known and controlled? I tend to assume that the
machine-only chambers were set up because of hazardous factors (making human
involvement risky) than from efficiency reasons. If that is what factories
today are, and considering that Musk is time-pressed to swell the number of
assembled cars, it's no wonder he has hard time tolerating it.

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Kristine1975
That was lackluster: Nothing specific, just generalities.

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miguelrochefort
TL;DR: "I'm convinced we can make factories better."

No shit.

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6stringmerc
From another comment here, and his own words to describe how he arrived at his
vision, it sounds like he's walking around his own factory and realizing it's
set up very inefficiently.

I mean, maybe he just figured this out, but it does sound a lot like "shoot
first, ask questions later" being spun into a positive.

Or, in less polite terms, "Not everybody's factory processes are as messed up
as Tesla's."

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spectrum1234
I'm pretty curious as to what plans he has.

It must be something along the lines of: \- Figure out everything that is
needed to be built for the product \- Think of an optimal factory for each
component that doesn't waste any volume. Additionally, allow for things to
change in size,etc using some type physics metadata. \- Connect all these
together and use physics first metadata to continually optimize.

