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BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

press.bmwgroup.com

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Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#101

Post by pcurve »

jarek83 wrote: post #98
wenc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterp…

BMW's most recent infotainment is a big step backwards to me in both areas - aesthetics and UX. Its previous generation was one of the best in the market also in both. I literally don't consider buying the newest 4-series just because of it, especially of the ultrawide driver's "monitor" - it's just so ugly, and I regret it, since on the outside the car appeals me so much more. I'd rather spend the same on previous y…

agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#102

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

paffdragon wrote: post #42
kingjimmy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make connecting SAP so difficult... this is the only way

It's not how it works. You suppose to contract a consulting company that contracts some offshore company to connect you to SAP.

And the customer being cheap doesn't pay for the proper modules and thus everything gets mapped to PSP elements -- to keep the same old garbage piles that get pushed around.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#103

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

What advantages has a humanoid robot compared to automation for the tasks in a factory?

I mean: yeah, it's easier to think for a human how to operate a human. Is this the Pareto optimum? No low hanging fruits left?

Does anyone here with years of experience in robotics have a better explanation? (I hope so, because all the domain experts I met, always could tackle questions that pop into the mind of a layman without even breaking a sweat. Experts being experts, obviously)

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#104

Post by jimnotgym »

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #61
Maxion wrote: post #23

Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product that costs a few million a month from whi…

SAP is truly terrible.

Well....

Before you say SAP is terrible, have you tried the competition?

It has some data entry screens that are super efficient, cursor always goes to the right place, tab moves you to the right place etc. 15 years and lots of ERPs later I have never seen better

When you are viewing a purchase invoice on the ledger you can see the PO it is matched to, click on it and it goes to the PO. Click a line on the PO you can see the GRNs related. Click on them you go to the actual GRNs

Oracle ERP can't do any of that.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#105

Post by jimnotgym »

avaer wrote: post #70

Not sure this counts as "humanoid" any more than the robots we've had in factories for a century... the hands and feet are nothing like a human's, and would not be improved by being more human. It seems they just made the shape of their machine have a vaguely human silhouette so they could ride a hype wave. I'm all for programmable humanoid robots, humans are an awesome human interface, but this ain't it.

And the speed it is working is much slower than a human

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#106

Post by Lio »

wenc wrote: post #63
Maxion wrote: post #23

Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product that costs a few million a month from whi…

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterp…

> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere

I drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all.

I find it quite well designed.

This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#107

Post by jimnotgym »

hypeatei wrote: post #37
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might actually describe a pretty good implementation of an interface to SAP. I think pencil is more efficient than SAP.

I agree and it's quite resilient to digital outages/downtime (at least in terms of hours, probably not more than a few days) so your manufacturing productivity won't drop to zero when the ERP system goes down. The paper logs can also be entered later when the system comes back up. As we've seen in the Iran conflict, datacenters are a target and result in extended outages.

I remember a few years ago hearing that SAP stood for Stop All Production

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#108

Post by jimnotgym »

torginus wrote: post #35
dmix wrote: post #24

Seems to be this European robotics company https://robotics.hexagon.com/product/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/hexagon-robotics-ai-software-a...

My prediction is that by the time humanoid robots actually make it to the factory floor, they'll be pretty un-humanoid. 90% of car manufacturing is done by oldschool industrial robots, and I've had people point out that heavy use of industrial robots are basically unique to the car industry. You might see a robot arm here and there in other industries, but it's somewhat rare, usually its all purpose-built machines or…

All of the robot arms where I work are stood idle. Humans are so much more agile, so much more adaptable, so much easier to train, give better feedback, their moving parts last much longer. We focus instead on making the humans as productive as they can be, MES, kitted parts, intelligent tools etc.

Edit: We do have robots btw. But they are not arms. They are super specialised, high precision machines that are designed to do a job humanoids could not

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#109

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

paffdragon wrote: post #42
kingjimmy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make connecting SAP so difficult... this is the only way

It's not how it works. You suppose to contract a consulting company that contracts some offshore company to connect you to SAP.

But you can't just hire one, you have to hire functional consultants (who tell you your flow is wrong and you have to adjust that to how SAP does things) and then implementation consultants who don't know how the process works, but can actually implement that integration. And then again after the next release because the integration broke.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#110

Post by RealityVoid »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #87
asdff wrote: post #62

Seems so funny to me that we are building llms to write in english code for computers. And building robots to perform some automated processes in the shape of humans. When are we going to rip the bandaid off, and skip bothering with the ux layer built for humans? I guess that is just old fashioned 20th century factory style automation that doesn't get headlines written about it, at least not in these decades.

The humanoid-like robots are designed for existing prouction-lines that can't be easily shut-down and retooled/reconfigured.

So... a dwindling, dying market?
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