Ramping up to High Volume Manufacturing -- Signal System

I am still a fan of Tesla. They have renewed an otherwise stagnant Auto Industry (mostly because they are a Tech Company, NOT an Auto Manufacturer) and are making the transition from a Design company to Design and Manufacturing. What am I talking about? Well they just delivered in 2019 more vehicles in this year than the total number of vehicles of all previous years combined! So how do you accomplish that? And what is a key transition Tesla now needs to make in their production processes that they can learn from the Auto Industry?

High Volume Manufacturing

What did they do? The key to manufacturing is to think about is like it is a living being. There are:

Inputs

  • Designs

  • Materials

Setup

  • Machines & People

  • Facility Layouts

  • Work Instructions

  • Quality Assurance & Inspection

Continuous

  • Problem Support

  • Maintenance & Support — Tools, Material, and Work Instructions

  • Facility Support

  • Change Support

I could write a single article on each of these, and I wanted to focus on what Tesla can learn from the Auto Industry — well those who do it best — Toyota & Honda (& soon Hyundai) Lean Manufacturing. — because I see Tesla repeating the same problems of Detroit in high volume manufacturing.

Problem Support

Quality is now a Customer Expectation and it is no longer good enough to slap together a partial solution or “fix it at the end” when you are making product in volume. Errors and defects create a compounding effect, and catch-up at the end is both extra expensive and a big assumption — worst of all, you are assuming you have ALL the problems found that need corrected. So what do you do? Setup a Problem Signal System with Support. The point of “stop the line” signals is to identify AND FIX problems at the point of origin — less rework, and solved permanently at the source! A few tips to remember:

1) Support must be adequate to accomplish root cause, error proofed solutions

2) Support has a great, positive response — “What is the problem, and how can I help?”

The keys here are, if you are already at volume, roll out the system in key areas (maybe even only ONE to start) and ONLY where you have enough Support to take the right action. And second, the MOST important person is the Operator — the one doing the work. They are the key problem solver and it is their knowledge and expertise that must be held of highest importance. The goal of Support is to help reach root cause, error-free state as effectively as possible.

Chris

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