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Comment by Neil44 | Hacker News Reader

I've toured a couple of car plants because I find them really interesting - Porsche, Mini - the level of refinement, sophistication and tracability of their ERP is always staggering.

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This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry, manufacturers record the tension with which each screw is torqued. That kind of fine grained logging is required for maintenance reasons and audited in case of e.g. accidents. Some modern car manufacturers use a similar level of detail in their manufacturing records. Common in both worlds is having very complex supply networks and just in time deliveries for these parts.

> This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry

I remember reading an account of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, where it was stated the investigation was hampered by the lack of serial numbers on some components, such as the astronauts' chairs. This made it hard to reconstruct the breakup sequence from the geographical distribution of the debris.

Do you need special connections to tour one? I would love to go, but I assume it would be difficult as a member of the public.

You can tour the Ford River Rouge truck factory, which is where they make the F-150 and F-150 Lightning (PS you can spend an entire weekend at the Henry Ford complex - the whole thing is outstanding):

https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/h...

I went on a tour of the VW Dresden factory back when it produced the Phaeton and Bentley Continental. It looks like they currently produce the ID.3 there and are still doing tours:

https://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/your-visit/our-tours.h...

At Mercedes-Benz we offer factory tours you can just sign up for. Agree with OP, well worth it!

Developing and iteratively refining a production line from pilot factory to network scale is not entirely unlike software development.

Here's a few clips of a modern one, including a longer doc:

https://youtu.be/UdDvDKC8FVM & https://youtu.be/TWLyRQbvr6o

Anyone can sign up for the Porsche factory in Stuttgart, Germany or the MINI plant in Oxford UK, there are probably many others too. Stuttgart is really dominated by Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, there's an giant M-B star on the town's big clock tower. It's a very business-y town but a nice visit for a car nut.

I believe Volkswagen's Wolfsburg factory is open for tours

While I was an exchange student in Germany, my cohort got a tour of an Audi factory.

That was 23 years ago, though.

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