Musk’s Lessons Learned- Five Step Process
Manufacturing is "staggeringly" hard- Part two
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(Cover photo credit: NASA)
October 13, 2021
You have to appreciate a guy who admits, “I messed up… multiple times.”
Elon Musk gets a lot of criticism for some of what he says and does. But the billionaire does occasionally spill the beans on what he’s experienced and what he's learned. He is a smart guy.
We laid out how Elon says he screwed up trying to fix manufacturing processes, especially at Tesla, a few years ago. But, more than 100 years after Henry Ford set up his assembly-line, Elon says he has figured out a lot about his vehicle production lines (Tesla and SpaceX). He now believes he was working backwards, trying to add automation, speed up the lines, and then delete parts or processes he learned were unnecessary.
Musk's Five Step Process as told to Everyday Astronaut (condensed). (Credit: Everyday Astronaut)
FIVE STEP PROCESS (They call it the Musk Algorithm)
He now is touting what he simply calls his five step process for manufacturing. Here they are in the order Musk says they must be applied.
1- Make your Design Requirements “less dumb”- Musk insists some of the requirements for a part or process are dumb especially if a smart person makes the requirement. It’s harder to challenge a smart person, he suggests. His point is that everyone is wrong some of the time and most design requirements should be questioned. He believes each requirement or restraint needs a person’s name attached, not a department. That way the person accountable will have to defend the part or process.
2- Delete Parts or Processes- Musk suggests some design requirements are “way more silly than you would think.” Musk adds, “you can’t hedge your bet,” suggesting engineers want to add items “just in case.” Delete, delete, delete and then add back in he says. If a part or process is not being added in about 10% of the time then, “not enough is being deleted.”
3- Simplify or Optimize- Musk believes engineers try to refine a part and process and in doing so sometimes improve something that, “should not exist.” “Don’t optimize something that should not exist,” he says.
4- Accelerate Cycle Time- after working those first three steps (refining and questioning the design process and parts associated with the product) Musk says, “go faster.” But, he adds, if one tries to go faster before fixing design issues a company is just, “digging your grave faster.”
5- Automate- Musk says this is the last step which will help refine the manufacturing process.
Telsa Model S (Credit: Tesla)
Musk admits he went backwards on this process “multiple times.” One lesson, “there on the order of 10,000 unique parts or processes in vehicle production. Even one one of them has a problem, you cannot make a car,” Musk said during the Italian Tech Week conference.
LESSONS SAVED TESLA FROM BANKRUPTCY
Learning these lessons, Musk believes, is why Tesla didn’t go bankrupt as so many other automobile start-ups did. “They all thought the prototype is the hard part. It is not. It is production,” Musk said on Tesla’s second quarter earnings call. “It is so hard to do manufacturing. It is so hard to do production,” he proclaimed.
Musk is a convert and, “I really encourage more people to get into manufacturing especially in the US,” adding on that call, “The US has an over-allocation in finance and the law.” He wishes more young, smart Americans would chose a manufacturing path.
The education of Elon Musk has left him as the evangelist for American manufacturing.