Elon Musk often gives a frank and humble account of technology, engineering and design when he speaks publicly. He clearly explains challenges, in relative terms to help us grasp the enormity of the task at his crew's hands.
450 ton giga casting unit of Tesla. A key example of the deep end-to-end innovation and continuous improvement which delivers exceptional value for the company, and ultimately, the customers. Credit: Foundryplanet/Youtube.
In Battery Day 2020, and during the Tesla Q4 Earnings Call, Elon and his team made clear the scale of the innovation and continuous improvement they have made. This is in both manufacturing and factory construction process spaces.
Continuous Improvement, or CI, is the seeking of continuous gains from a process by systematic study and then elimination of wastes. Traditionally this applies to manufacturing processes and how to reduce waste products, rework, damaged output, etc. More often now, this is applied to virtual work processes in companies and software.
In SpaceX - it is clear that they are embedding CI philosophy in all aspects of the business - this ranges from their fast iteration on Starship and Superheavy design and construction.
At Tesla - The team regularly share their deep innovation and continuous improvement in their manufacturing processes. As Elon says in many quotes - a good number curated here are related to the manufacturing process - how it needs improvement. A great example is
"There is at least a 5 - 10 fold potential improvement in production capability [with the Gigafactory]." - Elon Musk
Extending this thinking out further - here Elon holds up vehicle manufacturing as holding a potential 10x improvement - what gains could be available in other industries, other manufacturing processes?
Normally CI exercises are run as a face to face, with post-its, lots of quick interaction to get a shared understanding and get to the heart of the problem faster. And Tesla and SpaceX benefit from single focused places of work where teams can come together on the shop floor to work issues in a backlog.
In this way, the CI employed at SpaceX and Tesla could be compared with digital product development - where a product may have planned features, prioritised and developed in order of value to customer. Except instead of building new products and services, CI is focused on teasing out the bottlenecks, waste, inefficiencies, etc.
Schematic of the Value Stream Mapping. Credit: David Penfield
Working remotely, I recently ran a virtual CI exercise called a Value Stream Map - in here - a I worked with a multi-discipline IT team - data engineer, data architect, powerBI designer, business analyst. And myself as a Product Owner of the digital product.
I did some prework to set up the process as I understood, having a direct hand on working the process on a regular basis. I drew it on a virtual board and mapped process steps, added the details (number of people involved, number of inputs/outputs, the logical flow of data and communications. Later, the team and I would review the process together and get into the opportunities for improvement.
First though, I shared the board and asked for comments on any glaring errors or omissions. Even setting the process out in a visual form to see the flow of information was a useful exercise.
The exercise was conducted over a Zoom style call. annotating on virtual stickies - placing them on the process. Ultimately, arriving at a consolidated list of potential process improvements, we then ranked them together in terms of value back to our team. This was how we improved a process related to a digital product.
The key component of CI in Tesla, SpaceX development and indeed my own digital project was the awareness and open-mindedness on the problem.
Next taking time to systematically review the process, listen to the pain points from the people working the process and draw them out with concrete definition.
Then collating the pipeline of potential improvement projects and prioritising, then implementing the projects.
You can contact me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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