Macintosh Factory

This would have been a content-free article if not for the beautiful photos. Here’s a video tour of the Macintosh factory that used to be in Fremont, CA: link to this video

Keep reading. "There are 10 lights-out (fully automated) production lines at some factories, including table one in Chengdu, AIO (all-in-one) PC and LCD monitor lines at a factory in Chongqing, and a CNC line in Zhengzhou. ... Foxconn has deployed more than 40,000 Foxbots, industrial robots developed and produced in house, at factories in China." The Chengdu plant makes iPads.1 Foxconn refers to "table one" because they usually don't name their contract manufacturing clients. Apple used to have robotic assembly lines in Fremont, CA.2 Then they switched to cheap outsourced manual labor. 1 link 2 link to this video

Auto final assembly lines make about a car a minute. Some run a little faster, some a little slower. About 500 cars per shift. 2 shifts a day, 6 days a week will get you to 6,000. Beyond that, you need another assembly line. Going to 3 production shifts is rare; you need some maintenance downtime. This doesn't work like a growth curve. Once you get it working, an assembly line produces at a constant rate. Tesla's low output indicates serious downtime problems. They've shut down for some line rework, which is probably a good move. There's still no discussion of the Fremont plant's problems from someone who has both access and the knowledge to understand what they're seeing. So everybody is st…

…school problem.1 There's a whole theory of this, dating back to 1913. Apple is famous for having botched this with their Macintosh factory in Fremont.2 They centered their factory around an automated storage and retrieval system. This meant they could buffer a lot of work in process without making a visible mess. Wrong approach. 1 link 2 link to this video…

Steve invested heavily in automation for the Mac and NeXT factories. There are videos of these factories in action: We Are Manufacturing (Apple): link to this video The Machine to Build the Machines (NeXT): link Infamously, he caused a ton of issues for both factories when he demanded that the machinery be painted to colours of his liking. > When Jobs took a tour, he ordered that the machines be repainted in the bright colors he wanted. Carter objected; this was precision equipment, and repainting the machines could cause problems. He turned out to be right. One of the most expensive machines, which got painted bright blue, ended up not working properly and was dubbed “Steve’s Folly.” Finally Carter…