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A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

nytimes.com

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Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#51

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #43
omegant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this due to political reasons, nothing to do with eficiency.

But doesn't a business have to, at some point, meet a minimum level of efficiency to still be viable? Do subsidies and mandates make up for all that slack?

It's not just subsidies and mandates, it's large government contracts on maybe not actually needed systems. See the F-35 as an example of this, which has parts manufactured in a majority of states meaning it's impossible for congress to nix this sort of program because it would cost constituents jobs. Also how it makes it harder for congressmen and women to vote against these sorts of deals because it would cost their constituents future jobs.

I don't know about Airbus in particular but this is how it generally work with companies like Lockheed and Boeing.

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#52

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #43
omegant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this due to political reasons, nothing to do with eficiency.

But doesn't a business have to, at some point, meet a minimum level of efficiency to still be viable? Do subsidies and mandates make up for all that slack?

It's not just subsidies and mandates, it's large government contracts on maybe not actually needed systems. See the F-35 as an example of this, which has parts manufactured in a majority of states meaning it's impossible for congress to nix this sort of program because it would cost constituents jobs. Also how it makes it harder for congressmen and women to vote against these sorts of deals because it would cost their constituents future jobs.

I don't know about Airbus in particular but this is how it generally work with companies like Lockheed and Boeing.

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#53

Post by Jtsummers »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #43
omegant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this due to political reasons, nothing to do with eficiency.

But doesn't a business have to, at some point, meet a minimum level of efficiency to still be viable? Do subsidies and mandates make up for all that slack?

Only if there's sufficient competition. Boeing does the same thing, spreading their components across most of the US (and into other countries) for the same reasons. It's an alternate to conventional lobbying. Instead of, "Hey Congressman here's $100,000 for your campaign." It's, "Hey Congressman, vote for aircraft X and I'll move to your state and create 2000 jobs. Don't, and I'll pull out the 2000 jobs that are already there."

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#54

Post by reacweb »

erentz wrote: post #31

This was the most striking part to me: "According to The Seattle Times, the starting rate at the Airbus plant, about $16.50 per hour, is comparable to the starting wages at Boeing’s passenger-plane plant in Renton, Wash. But the Airbus pay scale tops out at $23 an hour, while experienced Boeing workers can earn $45." We now have so much surplus labor that even this relatively skilled job only pays $16.50 an hour.

They are hiring unskilled people who are paid during their training.

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#56

Post by JustSomeNobody »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #43
omegant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this due to political reasons, nothing to do with eficiency.

But doesn't a business have to, at some point, meet a minimum level of efficiency to still be viable? Do subsidies and mandates make up for all that slack?

This may be the minimum.

I would think that building planes, as expensive as they are, would mean that you would want to sell them to everyone. In order to sell in a country, you probably have to commit to building (or assembling) some parts of it in that country. Breaking it up the way they did probably is as efficient as they can make it now. I guess we'll see in some years how that turns out financially for them.

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#57

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mtw wrote: post #13
hawski wrote: post #7

Looking at those pictures I wonder how assembly, from unloading cargo to final testing, could be fully automated. I came to think that until we automate automation it will be quite hard. Humans with assist of tools are flexible enough - especially on this scale.

you will have to re-think the whole assembly process. And it's a bit far-fetched to think of an automated process for a A321. I would try to design a small plane - such as the next-gen Cessna - that could be built mostly by robots. Maybe hire most of the engineers from the carkmaker industry (Mercedes-Benz, Tesla). Then move up from there.

I think the problem there is one of scale (same as here, actually). Hardly any small planes get built. Cirrus is the largest builder of small airplanes and they sold 276 new aircraft in 2013. These planes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but even if you slashed it so that new planes only cost $50k, you still have two huge hurdles:

1. There aren't very many certificated pilots in the US (600k?), and a small fraction who fly regularly enough for owning a plane to make sense. Not a huge market.

2. This does nothing for operating costs. Fuel, maintenance, insurance, storage all mean that even for a small airplane, you should expect to spend $100 - 300 / hr for operating costs, depending on details of the plane and how often you fly. This means that the market really can't expand that much.

The best hope for putting lots of new airplanes in the air every year is a viable self-piloting VTOL electric aircraft. I don't see anything else doing it, and energy density of batteries means that we're probably decades away from that.

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#59

Post by JustSomeNobody »

swalsh wrote: post #29
cylinder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only employ 200 or so employees, as per the article. We are talking probably $10 million in payroll a year which is a rounding error at this scale. The automation fetishism is exhausting.

Payroll is a terrible number to look at to estimate if automation is worth doing. Automation provides ancillary benefits which are often more important than simply replacing people. For example automation can provide increased consistency (perhaps reducing human error?) for some tasks it can do the work faster. Sometimes automating things allows a company to do that thing more often. There's a bunch of reasons to aut…

Who maintains the robots? Precision equipment needs to maintain calibration, so who does that work? More robots? Is it robots all the way down?

Re: A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

#60

Post by JustSomeNobody »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #14
Gravityloss wrote: post #9

Fascinating to see something made not in China, and even the components don't come from there. (I realize they also do assembly and produce some components in China too.)

Why the hostility?

Why the jump to conclusions? A lot of people have the idea that most manufacturing occurs in China.
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