April 1, 2019—Tesla recently invited CleanTechnica to its automotive factory in Fremont, Calif., for a tour behind the scenes in one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world
The factory has an open-concept office space. Tesla even has its own coffee roast. In the Model 3 General Assembly lines, the balance of automation versus human effort had clearly been worked out as Tesla sought to make the assembly process not only faster and more predictable, but also more friendly for humans.
Tesla found that machines are great at working with parts that are always the same size and in the same place, like metal, bolts, batteries, battery packs, hard plastics, and such. When it comes to working with fabrics, belts, wires, and the like, humans are better, according to the report.
Temporary engineering workstations were set up in the middle of the production line to troubleshoot the equipment. A line of partially finished vehicles is pulled out of production flow for body shaping issues to be corrected before moving along to painting.
