
Toyota's Takaoka #2 Line: The Most Flexible Line in the World - adzicg
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/26955/inside-toyotas-takaoka-2-line-the-most-flexible-line-in-the-world
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not_kurt_godel
I don't doubt the line is much more efficient and flexible as claimed, but the
article doesn't do a very good job explaining exactly how the gains are
achieved beyond hand-waving about clever contraptions that are faster than
robots and the ability to dynamically move stations around. It seems difficult
to imagine that hordes of industrial engineers haven't done the calculations
on each of these methods countless times at all car manufacturing companies.
There must be deeper, more subtle factors that explain why Toyota's particular
combination of techniques yields such superior results. Perhaps it's just the
culmination of a lot of long-tail optimizations that only Toyota has had time
and capital to let mature or maybe there really is just "one secret trick"
that underpins it all - the article doesn't really give a good sense of what
it might be. In either case it'd be interesting to see a detailed breakdown
with numbers comparing the various lines with explanations for why particular
decisions were or weren't made to truly understand why the system works so
well.

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spyckie2
it sounds like the benefits of the line is the flexibility, not necessarily
efficiency gains. I think the idea of the article is that fixed production is
a business weakness in today's fast moving consumer market.

This also doesn't sound like something Tesla needs yet, as this seems to be
great for building different types of cars based on demand rather than maxing
a single car output.

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FPGAhacker
I thought this was basically what Tesla had to do with the add on tent
manufacturing the 3’s.

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athenot
I know that car analogies for software is an over-done metaphor but while
reading this article I'm thinking of heavy processes for software deployment
that are hard to change and in my mind I'm screaming "this is what agile looks
like!"

Processes and controls are very important for quality, but as business goals
shift and evolve, the processes also need to evolve. But designing processes
that can evolve gracefully is not a trivial task, especially in risk-averse
organizations.

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sodosopa
> this is what Agile looks like

FYI Kanban came out of the process on Toyota assembly lines.

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redwall_hp
QR codes, too.

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Xunxi
What I would've loved to see is the comparative efficacy captured in motion
for (lets say) a "layman's observation" of production. Just a glimpse into how
it works out on the "flexible line"

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nabla9
This maybe:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0E66vaiXeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0E66vaiXeg)

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csours
That's a very nice video of a production plant, but I don't think it's the one
in question.

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lnsru
“They would tell you that robots are great for repetitive tasks like welding,
or painting, but they fail at picking and handling small parts.” Are robots
really that bad nowadays? I imagine, it would be a problem in VGA-only camera
years. Now we have tens of megapixels, lidars, tons of computing power
(cheap!).

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nexuist
I think the bigger problem is in sensor precision, particularly those sensors
responsible for reporting what state the arm in (i.e. so the computers onboard
can calculate the position of the arm relative to the object it needs to pick
up). Sensors with low tolerances are extremely expensive and those particular
robot manufacturers may have opted for less accurate sensors to save on costs.
They may work perfectly fine for moving things like doors and frames; but the
differences make themselves known as soon as you try to interact with bolts
and etc.

When I did robotics we had a perfectly capable Linux box running PID loops
several hundred times a second; but our robot still sucked b/c our on board
motion sensors were simply not precise enough to give us accurate data to feed
the algorithms. As usual, it's all about the data.

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2YwaZHXV
As someone who works with modern industrial robots, like you'd find in a car
factory, the sensors they're using for the arm positioning are unbelievably
precise. I can have the robot stopped, with the brakes on, and push on the end
of the arm with my fingers and see the joints registering the deviation (and
not by 1 or 2 counts, but many more), while I don't perceive any significant
movement of the robot.

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crb002
Takaoka Line 2, when Category Theory meets auto manufacturing. Love the carts
they move cars on. Curious if Tesla attempts such a line next.

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nikofeyn
> Curious if Tesla attempts such a line next.

and how exactly would they do that? their non-automated lines barely work.

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nkoren
That's FUD BS. You don't produce nearly a quarter of a million cars if your
production line "barely works". The truth is that they're now routinely
exceeding a thousand Model 3 cars per day.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-
tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

~~~
nikofeyn
they have a history of manufacturing problems, do they not? they may not be
having them at this very moment, but it is well documented and discussed that
they have had issues. i think when you're building cars in a makeshift,
outdoor assembly line just a year ago, you can't say that you have everything
together. maybe they've hit their numbers, but their manufacturing process
hasn't been elegant. is this incorrect? and this is a personal opinion, i
think founded in some objective reality, but i don't believe teslas to be
well-manufactured or designed from a non-owner's perspective. i have sat in
them and ridden in one, and it just is not an impressive design and fit and
finish to me compared to more entrenched car companies. this is both a design
and manufacturing issue, from my understanding.

the point of my comment, which i thought was clear, was a counter to the
continual tesla hype in that "can't wait until tesla addresses <this> problem"
as if they've conquered all problems that have come before. toyota has it
together and has a significant amount of r&d that goes into their advanced
assembly lines. it's a bit laughable to think of tesla suddenly taking them on
in automation given their historical troubles. or am i wrong?

also, those numbers are fine, but tesla isn't even the largest electric car
manufacturer in the world, by sales numbers. and they don't approach
traditional car makers. for example, kia sells around 600,000 cars in a single
year, and that is including say three times as many models as tesla has
available. tesla isn't some manufacturing darling story as far as i can tell.
they have no ability to yearly iterate like other car companies. or do they?
how do they update their models?

i think the point remains: it is flippant to suggest they can just suddenly
innovate on an automated line.

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pwaivers
> "After pulling a few strings to get into the Takaoka plant, you will see the
> Gordian knot become untied."

Um... the Gordian knot was not untied, but rather cut by a sword. It's
supposed to be a bold, out-of-the-box solution to a seemingly impossible
problem. I don't know if the author of the article chose the wrong word on
purpose.

