
Internal documents reveal the grueling way Tesla hit its 5,000 Model 3 target - plasticchris
https://www.thisisinsider.com/tesla-hit-model-3-target-by-reworking-thousands-of-cars-2018-8
======
Animats
Why was this flagged?

This has been a big issue in auto manufacturing for decades. At one time, the
Detroit automakers ran "dealer preparation centers" to finish what the
production line hadn't done. Toyota's big innovation was figuring out how to
get it right the first time, which got costs down and quality up. In a Toyota
plant, if you have to stop the line for 10 seconds to get it right, a worker
can do that. Videos of Toyota plants show a cycle time display and a vehicles
per hour display over the line. It's expected that a car will take an extra
few seconds every once in a while.

~~~
reaperducer
_At one time, the Detroit automakers ran "dealer preparation centers" to
finish what the production line hadn't done._

Is that the "dealer prep" line that always seems to appear as a non-optional
line item in the price of a new car?

~~~
jonathankoren
No. The "dealer prep" you're referring to is literally taking just taking the
plastic wrap off the car.

He's talking about fixing production errors, like panels being stuck on
wrong[0], or window gaskets being misinstalled[3].

As a side note, this is the first time I've heard anyone defend the lemons
coming out of Detroit in the 70s. It was so bad, that my dad would check the
VINs, so that he would never buy a car that was built on a Monday or Friday,
because it was too likely that the workers were either drunk or
hungover.[1][2][4] And this is when he was in the UAW as mechanic and then a
body man.

I thought these production issues might be overblown, so I checked the deck
lids on three 3s in the parking lot at work. All three were misaligned. I
didn't expect them to be perfect (it's not laser perfect on my 2010 Jetta
either), but I didn't expect to fit my finger through the gaps. All three
cars. All three in different places. That killed it for me. I will never buy a
Tesla 3.

[0] [https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/body-panel-gap-
and-a...](https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/body-panel-gap-and-
alignment-issues.12255/)

[1] [https://jalopnik.com/the-ten-worst-car-factories-in-
history-...](https://jalopnik.com/the-ten-worst-car-factories-in-
history-1595864932)

[2] [https://jalopnik.com/5645880/auto-workers-drinking-
getting-h...](https://jalopnik.com/5645880/auto-workers-drinking-getting-high-
during-lunch)

[3] [https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/unfinished-metal-
and...](https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/unfinished-metal-and-glue-
seen-around-front-windshield-normal.107230/)

[4]
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/transcript](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/transcript)

~~~
lifeformed
How do you convert a VIN to the date of manufacture?

~~~
mikestew
[https://electrek.co/2017/07/18/tesla-model-3-vin-
decoder/](https://electrek.co/2017/07/18/tesla-model-3-vin-decoder/)

EDIT: whoops, missed the context. The above just tells you the model year. But
you were replying to someone that implied it could be done down to the day. It
can be done down to the month, but in my experience down to the day is rare,
if non-existent (none of my vehicle VINs have that resolution).

------
GuB-42
So what? They talk about it like it is a bad thing.

Their cars work, they met their target, who cares about the details of the
manufacturing process? Yes, there is room for improvement, there is always
room for improvement, I let the guys at Tesla deal with their priorities.

It is a nice insight on how things are done at Tesla but that's about it.

~~~
dgritsko
Manufacturing rate is one measure of success. First Pass Yield (FPY - % of
cars that don't require rework) is another. It seems like Tesla is sacrificing
the latter in service of the former, or at least they were towards the end of
Q2. I want to see Tesla succeed, but it seems like they really need to focus
on increasing FPY in order to improve their long-term odds of success.

~~~
stinos
_First Pass Yield (FPY - % of cars that don 't require rework) is another_

I get that, but isn't it expected that if you create a new car factory, sort
of from scratch, your FPY won't be exceptionally high? Unless you really know
what you're doing due to previous experience in car manufacturing?

~~~
threeseed
Wouldn’t you learn how to properly manufacture a car before trying to release
it at scale ?

~~~
northwest65
To learn to build it is one thing; you could have a dozen highly trained
engineers assemble it at their leisure and have a near perfect car every time.
But to build the same car at scale on a production line is going to be an
entirely different kettle of fish, with all new lessons to be learnt.

It seems to me that it would be an entertaining albeit high pressure
job/problem sorting that out. You would of course try to engineer as much of
the solution ahead of time, but in production scenarios, shit most definitely
happens.

------
Theodores
Seems that a lot of people think that car making begins and ends with the
production line. The bit you see on TV - 'final assembly' \- is not the whole
car making process, it is just the coming together of the many parts that have
been assembled elsewhere into bigger parts that then get put together in this
'final assembly'.

Sounds as if Tesla's 'final assembly' is not that final with a little bit of
work being picked up in quality control. The spin of the story is that Tesla
are cheating their figures by just repairing a few extra cars to get them out
the door, but there is probably a happier story than this - at least those
defects were not shipped to customers.

It is okay for a new company to take time to re-learn what has gone on before.
I jokingly imagine Tesla to be actually catching up to 1970's British Leyland
quality control 'circles' with the next step being a relearning of the 'Toyota
Way'. It takes time to build a culture of quality control, efficiency and all
these good things. The only thing is that soon our friends in China are going
to be offering plenty of very nice electric cars to customers who just want
electric rather than dinosaur power. Will Tesla be able to compete once China
have enough EVs for their own market?

~~~
Barrin92
>It is okay for a new company to take time to re-learn what has gone on
before. I jokingly imagine Tesla to be actually catching up to 1970's British
Leyland quality control 'circles' with the next step being a relearning of the
'Toyota Way'.

This would be okay if we actually were living in the 70s right now. The
problem is of course that Tesla consumes money (like basically nobody else)
and the real Toyota is still around and produces as many cars on a weekend as
Tesla does in an entire year.

It's not like people are going to stop buying Toyota cars out of goodwill for
Tesla.

> who just want electric rather than dinosaur power.

this too seems to be part of the reality distortion field around Tesla. All
big manufacturers already produce hybrid and electric cars, and their research
budgets dwarf Tesla, they will be ready in a few years as the market grows.

------
bryanlarsen
That headline could also be read as "Tesla hit Model 3 target DESPITE
reworking thousands of cars". Presumably they've got technicians both doing
the rework, and also technicians and engineers working on solving the
underlying issues causing the rework. Once the latter is done, they'll have
freed up a lot of technicians for other tasks, and making 5000 cars a week
will be almost trivial in comparison.

~~~
mcguire
Which is good since other manufacturers are making 200,000 or so.

~~~
danhak
It's almost as if scaling an operation > 100% YOY poses different challenges
than continuing to run a stable and mature enterprise.

~~~
jonathankoren
Tesla is 15 years old, and operates out the NUMMI plant, that that was
building 428,633 cars a year.[0]

Auto manufacturers changes models, every year. They either tweak them,
completely redesign them, or launch new models. Ford even changed the entire
frame and welding setup when they transitioned from steel to aluminum for the
F150. None of them has these problems.

I'm sorry, but Tesla's growing pains should be over. And if they shouldn't be
over, when should they? Does it take 20 years to figure out how to mass
produce an item that has been mass produced by many different companies, from
around the world, for about 100 years now?

At some point, you've got a man that has no previous experience running a
manufacturing plant, repeating the same mistakes the industry made 40 years
ago. Including most damningly trying to automate final assembly[1], because he
thinks he's being clever.

Let's be honest here. Building a car with zero defects is possible. It's done
every day at scale, at every Toyota plant in the world.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI)

[1] [https://qz.com/1261214/how-exactly-tesla-shot-itself-in-
the-...](https://qz.com/1261214/how-exactly-tesla-shot-itself-in-the-foot-by-
trying-to-hyper-automate-its-factory/)

~~~
williamdclt
To be fair, a tesla car has little in common with an "item that has been mass
produced by many different companies, from around the world, for about 100
years now". Almost all of the internals are as different as a computer is to a
typewriter (please don't argue on the analogy, it's bad but gets the point)

~~~
jonathankoren
If the problems were limited to the drive train, then I might concede the
point, but we'd still be talking about 15 years of experience. From what I
understand, the batteries aren't blowing up, and electric motors work, so I
guess the drive train is fine.

The damning part is that these not the problems that people are talking about.
People are reporting not being able to put a piece of metal on straight. We're
talking about gluing a rubber gasket on to a piece of glass. _This_ is 100
years old, and this is what they're fucking up.

------
melling
Tesla is almost at 6000 Model 3’s a week.

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

And I believe that they’re building almost 2,000 Model X,S cars a week.

At almost 400,000 cars a year, Tesla has got to be doing better than many
expected.

Elon seems to be doing fine in this recent interview:

[https://youtu.be/mr9kK0_7x08](https://youtu.be/mr9kK0_7x08)

~~~
Animats
That's not bad for one line. Most auto production final assembly lines make
about one car a minute. Tesla Fremont is now running 7 days a week, 2 shifts,
and talking about 3 shifts. That's usually considered overdoing it. Few auto
plants run more than two shifts, and do maintenance on the third shift and
Saturday. More than that, and quality suffers and the workers burn out. 5,000
cars a week per line is about right.

~~~
xkjkls
Also, running that many shifts is a lot of overtime paid.

------
sytelus
The article hasn't described the root cause but Musk had hinted at it in one
of the interviews. I think what happened was that when gigafactory started,
they had this huge vision of complete end-to-end automated assembly. So there
were robots designed for each portions of assembly, including some robots
which were supposed to operate in inperfect situations through vision data,
for example, locating a dangling hose, grasping it and connecting it within a
car. The big learning was that robotic functions that operated in uncertain
environment, relied on vision and tried to perform manipulation tasks failed
big time to do the job consistently. Musk mentioned that human would pick up a
gangling hose and connect to its expected position effortlessly in a second
while a robot will fumble around and dig in to car even damaging it. In past
few months, I think they have put a lot many more humans at work turning in to
more traditional way of assembly, although more automated than other car
manufacturers.

------
titanomachy
37 minutes of rework per car doesn't sound like very much. It would be
interesting to know what fraction of the total time that is.

~~~
dgritsko
37 minutes * 4300 cars = 2,651 hours of work.

~~~
jakelarkin
2,651 hours/week * $30/hour = ~$80k/week. on a volume of cars that brings in
$200m/week. so what? its a minor inefficiency.

~~~
LoSboccacc
not really. each rework is the equivalent of a branching prediction failure in
a very very long cpu pipeline.

all tasks are massively parallelized in a production line. to reach 5000 car
month tesla need to crank a car every seven minutes.

now imagine a production line that pump a car out every seven minutes and you
need 37 minutes manual labor for each of them

the inefficence doesn't look so minor. it's also a logisticsl nightmare, just
imagine parking all those cars while the rework stations free up.

~~~
zaroth
In the time it takes one person to do the 37 minutes of rework you have taken
5 more cars off the line.

So 6 mechanics in 6 bays at the end of the line do the rework jobs and cars
continue to flow out of the plant one every 7 minutes.

An extra $20 in COGS per car. Is this really so horrible? What am I missing?

Even if it’s 10 mechanics and 10 drivers moving cars into and out of the bays,
with some bays idle some of the time and let’s call it an extra $60 in COGS.

Their gross margin is already way better than anyone expected to see on the
Model 3, they used some very impressive electrical design to save in so many
places.

Even just their rear view mirror is more than $50 cheaper than the
competition’s mirrors because of their smart electrical design. [1]

Right now they need _volume_ more than anything else. Speaking as a
reservation holder.

[1] - [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-solidly-
profitable-s...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-solidly-profitable-
sandy-munro/)

~~~
LoSboccacc
> What am I missing?

just on top on my mind tooling, factory space, training, burnout, turns, above
average defects that will have to be handled by the post sales network.

> they used some very impressive electrical design

oh yes they are brilliant car, no question about that. it's less impressive
when you get an engineering marvel and the build quality is random depending
on the hands that worked on it in post processing.

------
kenjackson
If this impacts the total time to make each car, wouldn't that impact your
production volume? It seems weird that something that should make you slower
is what allows you to hit your target? Unless they're saying the target
doesn't take this into account -- which would just seem stupid.

~~~
mikeash
Rework can happen in parallel with production, so it won’t necessarily affect
your rate.

~~~
kadenshep
It definitely affects labor productivity.

------
RayVR
Not sure why this would be flagged. Seems like an article of general interest.

~~~
MBCook
I’d imagine the large contingent of hyper-pro-Tesla people who argue
virulently against an any thing that makes Tesla/Elon look bad.

He’s turned into an almost political topic in that way, unfortunately.

~~~
reustle
I sit in neither camp but I see almost as many anti-Tesla commenters, too

------
chmike
I can't stop myself thinking that this looks like short seller's propaganda.
Producing a new car require adjustments in the process. This info tells me the
feedback loop is in full swing to enhance production quality. I fully
understand why Elon Musk wants to make Tesla a private company again.

Short seller's activity is toxic for the US industry. Allowing to make profit
on other peoples failure is a good recipe to pull down an economy. Good luck
with that.

~~~
slivym
I think you're being a bit too sensitive. I agree with you - building a whole
new production line, and Tesla's share holders understand that too. This is
just more information for those shareholders. It's important that there's
accurate information about Tesla's manufacturing process for the market to
correctly value the stock. It's no more objectionable for short sellers to
emphasise bad news to drive the stock down than it is for Tesla to emphasise
good news to drive it up.

~~~
chmike
Ideally, information should be objective. The efforts and pressures should go
toward this goal.

What you say, if I understood correctly, is that it is normal to have
disinformation news and that they will cancel themselves out. Unfortunately,
information doesn't add up like numbers.

------
wongarsu
>14% of the vehicles made didn't need rework [...]

>The most common reason Model 3 cars require rework is a "failed manual task,"
followed by cosmetic issues

Given how entirely ad-hoc their entire production line still is, and how the
car doesn't seem to be designed for easy assembly at all, this is
unsurprising. But at least they don't seem to skimp on quality control.

~~~
Analemma_
> But at least they don't seem to skimp on quality control.

I don't think this is true (remember, reworking only addresses the problems
you can see).

Last weekend I rented somebody's Model 3 on Turo to see what it was like, and
while I enjoyed it, the QC problems are real. The touchscreen crashed twice,
and the cupholder in the center spar doesn't close unless you push it very
slowly. This is in a $60,000 car! Things like that don't inspire confidence in
long-term reliability and I definitely won't be spending my own money on a
Model 3 until I see some assurance that they are overhauling their QC in a big
way.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> The touchscreen crashed twice

In this case, do you lose the speedometer etc while it resets? Does it reset
automatically or do you have to press something? Genuinely curious.

Edit: this will become the go-to excuse for speeding in the future - "I'm
sorry officer, I don't know how fast I was going, the speedometer had crashed
and needed to reboot".

------
throwawaymath
Is Insider an especially important source? Why is the title editorialized to
include it?

~~~
dang
It wasn't; it was part of the doc title. Most publications do this. We take
those bits out.

------
trixie_
With this company so shorted how are we supposed to tell the difference
between actual news and a hit piece?

~~~
ralusek
Read the article and then use your noggin.

------
hevi_jos
This is great. Mr Musk is a perfectionist, like Japanese are. He is not
selling bad finished cars(like other companies will do).

They are also using lots of automation. This means there are lots of problems
at first. With automation, once you solve a problem, it is solved forever.

How you could compare Tesla rework with other companies rework, where the
threshold that determines if a car needs reworking is decided by the
executives of the same companies?

I could make rework zero just selling broken cars. I bought a European car
with a problem in one valve of the engine when it was brand new. I told the
dealers about the strange sound, they told me it was normal. It was not and
gave me lots of headaches later.

~~~
gamblor956
Most other companies would fire a factory manager if even a fraction of the
cars produced at the factory required rework of any kind, let alone the
majority of the cars requiring 37 minutes of rework.

Take your Eurocar example, and then multiply that by multiple systems. And
then apply that to almost every purchaser of the vehicle. And now you
understand Tesla's problem. Somewhere along the way, Mr. Musk's
"perfectionism" is interfering with the actual production and quality control
of the vehicles and resulting in vehicles that are very far from
perfect....when they easily could be, if he were to let the professionals run
the company.

