Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Factories are just rooms

interconnected.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 133 posts

Re: Factories are just rooms

#31

Post by rm445 »

I worked for a company whose factory really was just a room - the company was a machine-builder, a B2B manufacturer of custom production equipment, but with very little investment in special-purpose machinery for its facilities or even machine tools, just an attitude that the company is the people and we can do or buy anything that our customers need.

In some ways that attitude seemed admirable, but ultimately it didn't help the company win or keep consistent business. You'd have gaggles of smart people building custom prototypes but nothing scaled up. The customers couldn't see the vision of scaling their production there, or just saw that they could get better pricing going to factory which had already invested in the right special-purpose machinery.

That's what a factory is to me - ideally reconfigurable, but a place with capital investment for production. It's good to show kids what's behind the curtain but don't get it mixed up with a prototype shop.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#32

Post by calvinmorrison »

rm445 wrote: post #31

I worked for a company whose factory really was just a room - the company was a machine-builder, a B2B manufacturer of custom production equipment, but with very little investment in special-purpose machinery for its facilities or even machine tools, just an attitude that the company is the people and we can do or buy anything that our customers need. In some ways that attitude seemed admirable, but ultimately it did…

Factories, were like that. Giant Mills, Planing machines, vacuum forming tooling, welding stations, etc. Configurable, yes. Tooling, yes. It's why ford, singer and a hundred other american factories could start making bombs, guns and anything during WW2. You had machinists who could read a drafting diagram, and drafters who could draft anything up.

Today, could we do that? probably not. Not even - we don't have the basic bootstrapping tools in capacities needed, we don't have a wide group of people with the skillset.

So yes, you can make anything in a factory designed to make mostly anything

With specialization, especially like in the auto industry, you'll have one shop in mexico that gets an order 6 weeks ahead of time and has to deliver down to the day on the production schedule of ford to supply say a car headrest, and thats it. So, could we... today... maybe?

Re: Factories are just rooms

#33

Post by tsss »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #32
rm445 wrote: post #31

I worked for a company whose factory really was just a room - the company was a machine-builder, a B2B manufacturer of custom production equipment, but with very little investment in special-purpose machinery for its facilities or even machine tools, just an attitude that the company is the people and we can do or buy anything that our customers need. In some ways that attitude seemed admirable, but ultimately it did…

Factories, were like that. Giant Mills, Planing machines, vacuum forming tooling, welding stations, etc. Configurable, yes. Tooling, yes. It's why ford, singer and a hundred other american factories could start making bombs, guns and anything during WW2. You had machinists who could read a drafting diagram, and drafters who could draft anything up. Today, could we do that? probably not. Not even - we don't have the b…

China can do it. No car that leaves a factory there is the same. Everything automated and yet customizable.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#34

Post by skort »

Neat, but sort of ironic their main product is an "AI clock" that takes an intrinsically human act, writing a poem, and pulls the human out of the loop.

It's nice that they explained the process to a bunch of kids, helping to de-mystify something quite abstract to many of us (where does all the stuff come from?).

I just think that perhaps we have over-indexed on STEM and this is a prime example of that. The article mentions talking about industrial designers, which is cool.

> I want these kids to become designers, engineers, inventors, factory owners, and all the rest.

but what about the poets?

It's the sort of thinking that I've seen all over tech, where people are so focused on/obsessed with using technology to solve problems they seem to forget and lose appreciation for all the people that make their lives possible and enjoyable.

Anyway, cool article but don't buy the slop-flinging e-waste please.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#35

Post by ChuckMcM »

I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually work. But I've always augmented that with "okay and this is how we'd make something like that." As a result my kids, now adults, always start with the mindset of "Somebody made this, so I could too if I had to." and that really unlimits the kinds of self constraints people put on themselves. When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles. And when I see someone building tools out of the abundance of capabilities that are out there I say, "Yup, they get it." 3D printing, inexpensive miniature milling machines and lathes, libraries full of books about making stuff. Its all doable, you don't have to buy it from a store and the one you make yourself will work exactly the way you want it to.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#37

Post by calvinmorrison »

tsss wrote: post #33
calvinmorrison wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factories, were like that. Giant Mills, Planing machines, vacuum forming tooling, welding stations, etc. Configurable, yes. Tooling, yes. It's why ford, singer and a hundred other american factories could start making bombs, guns and anything during WW2. You had machinists who could read a drafting diagram, and drafters who could draft anything up. Today, could we do that? probably not. Not even - we don't have the b…

China can do it. No car that leaves a factory there is the same. Everything automated and yet customizable.

Right but big robot arms do need to be reprogrammed. In short we traded higher throughput for less flexibility. Tooling and such is expensive and complicated. A sheet brake and a welder and a mill and lathe can produce a LOT of stuff without any expensive tooling.
Post reply on HN