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Comment by PinguTS | Hacker News Reader

In what sense is Tesla a leader in JIT manufacturing?

Do you know how manufacturing takes place at all those other car companies in Germany, Japan, and South Korea? I can not talk about the Asian-based companies, but I know for sure that the manufacturing plants in Germany are very ahead. Because they produce different models at same time on the same track. Each and every car is different in every aspect. In Europe it is very common that you order your car they way you like it and do not buy the one that dealer has in its parking lot. You order to your specification and the option lists are huge compared to the one from Tesla.

Tesla is having only one Model with limited different features and many same parts from Ford, Audi, Mercedes, Bosch and others and still is unable to keep up with delivery as you can see from their latest IR reports.

BTW, the Tesla plant is build with German technology by German companies. Just to remind you.

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The claim about leading JIT does seem a bit ridiculous, given JIT manufactoring grew out of the Toyata Production System[1] which encompases Kaizen, Kanban and similar.

All of which was pioneered decades before Tesla existed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System

I learned that as Toyotism.

EDIT: Another therm for that is "Lean manufacturing" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

Lean manufacturing works right up to the point where one of your vendors gives you a bad part. Your choice is to either shut down a line or have excess backup supplies at which point there's no need to have been lean.

I'm not sure how it helps to have a backup supplies of bad parts?

It should be obvious that quality control across the entire supply chain is vital to make lean work -- and indeed that is how Toyota and others does it: They work very closely with suppliers.

The Tesla Factory is the NUMMI plant, which I believe was the first factory outside of Japan that began to use Lean. The manager of Tesla's factory is Gilbert Passin who is a "Toyota Manufacturing Expert" according to: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100203005622/en/Tesl...

It's stupid. Tesla manufactures a couple of cars with an insignificant volume in less than a handful of countries.

When they are building at Toyota volumes with their diverse product range then I will be impressed.

When was the last time a United States automobile manufacturer started and lasted for longer than a decade?

Of the major US manufacturers, none were started after 1925 (though some had brands that began after that - like Saturn, which operated from 1990 to 2010); of the minor ones, only Tesla and DeLorean could be considered household names - and only one of those is manufacturing new automobiles.

Most of the minor manufacturers are niche (e.g., racing / supercar; off-road; golf cart; single-part mfg; kit; etc) oriented. Of the modern minor manufacturers that are or are planning to sell actual automobiles to consumers:

* Tesla produces ~700 vehicles per week, and has a global cumulative sales of 46,948 units through Sept '14. * Fisker has delivered ~1,800 vehicles (ca 2012) * Detroit Electric (revived in '08) has yet to deliver a single automobile * Aurica doesn't even have a prototype * AM General is primarily a military outfit, manufacturing HMMMWVs

Frankly, I'm impressed that a non-military-contractor has been able to even begin producing at the levels TSLA has been able to (~37,000 units per anum).

For a new automobile manufacturer, their sales numbers are anything but insignificant: they're larger than any other minor US manufacturer, and larger than a lot of foreign minor manufacturers.

> In Europe it is very common that you order your car they way you like it and do not buy the one that dealer has in its parking lot. You order to your specification and the option lists are huge compared to the one from Tesla.

I can confirm, I bought a Mercedes and they had 10-20 options, which I could customize however I wanted.

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