One Car at a Time: Building the Machine that Builds the Machine
As we walked into Commonwealth Fusion's giant magnet manufacturing facility, I couldn't help but reflect on my own beginnings when I first found my way into the newly acquired Tesla factory in Fremont, California. It was 2011, and the vast 5.2 million square feet of what was once an old Toyota & GM production facility stretched out before me, filled with potential and the promise of new ideas. The challenge of transforming this space into Tesla's production machine for the Model S was as daunting as it was exhilarating.
Acquired through our partnership with Toyota, the facility was an ancient, antiquated vehicle factory complete with all the equipment to build vehicles, including a casting center, paint shop, and conveyors configured for whole vehicles. We spent a significant amount of time deciding what could be repurposed and what was too outdated to be useful. With the tight budget of a startup, our approach had to be iterative. The team decided to leave the general assembly vehicle conveyor in place and designed the process creatively around it. Using Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), they moved freshly painted bodies through a crude, station-by-station assembly process, installing the wire harnesses, dashboard, interior panels, and seating for the first Model S sedans. It wasn't until the following year that the new general assembly conveyor arrived, allowing Tesla to ramp up production significantly. This creative thinking enabled us to bring the Model S to market in record time.
I led the team building the first 250 Model S development powertrains and coordinated the cross-functional teams preparing and launching production. Our first challenge was how to tackle the enormous amount of work ahead of us in an effective, parallelized manner. We created multidisciplinary teams for each major vehicle subassembly—battery, motor, inverter, and charger. Each team was responsible for building out their own mini-factories within the larger production facility and delivering their assemblies to the vehicle general assembly line just in time. Strong bonds were built within these cross-functional teams, which included design engineers, manufacturing engineers, buyers, quality managers, material planning & control, and production associates. The vision was working when the teams started spending more time together on the production floor setting up the line, in the warehouse, or visiting suppliers than with members of their functional disciplines. Friendly competition was running between the teams; no one wanted to be the one holding up production. They did whatever was necessary to ensure delivery. They worked late into the evening, engineers pitched in at production stations when we were short-staffed, and Sundays became more regular than we wanted to admit.
The diversity of our team was one of our greatest strengths. Composed of veterans from the traditional automotive sector, eager young graduates from top engineering schools, and seasoned startup professionals from the local software tech ecosystem, our collective experience and fresh ideas helped us redefine what was possible in automotive manufacturing. Not to be missed were the fantastic team members who did the hard work of assembling the vehicles. A tenacious bunch, some of whom had previously worked at the facility under Toyota, had the grit and perseverance to overcome the countless challenges of building a new factory. They worked hand in hand with the cross-functional teams, thinking creatively about how to optimize workflows, catching potential quality issues early, and making fixtures to transform building vehicles from an art to a repeatable process. They embraced the ambiguity of building and operating the factory at the same time. This sense of ownership and accountability, built around small elite teams, was core to the Tesla culture.
Financial constraints were also a significant challenge, but they taught us the importance of being resourceful. We adopted the motto “scrappy, not crappy"—a reminder to be cost-conscious without compromising on quality. One example of this was the purchase of the Schuler hydraulic stamping press from a distressed detroit based automotive supplier. Standing seven stories tall, this behemoth metal press is the largest west of the Mississippi. New, the Schuler stamping press had a multi-year lead time and a cost of $50M but used, the team was able to have it delivered to the factory for a total cost of less than $6M in under 4 months. This is a great example of the “scrappy, not crappy” philosophy in action and how it guided us through tough decisions, from sourcing materials to implementing lean processes while staying on time and budget.
Through trial and error, we learned some of the most basic strategies for designing a factory. For instance, maintaining buffer stock between major assemblies was critical. If a subassembly line ran short on parts, having buffer stock meant the whole factory didn't need to shut down. We also discovered the importance of the manufacturing execution system (MES) for ensuring quality, a date-controlled manufacturing bill of materials for material consumption, and the material requirements planning system (MRP) for ensuring suppliers delivered on time. These insights were fundamental to keeping production flowing smoothly, and we were learning about them on the job!
While building something entirely our own was exhilarating, we made many mistakes along the way. Reflecting now, I see how even the smallest amount of mentorship could have saved us time and money by helping us see around corners and avoid some of the most obvious pitfalls. Imagine if we had a community of peers who were sharing best practices in real-time—we could accelerated a whole generation of advanced manufacturers!
The immense value of all of our collective experiences and the lessons learned is undeniable. With the growing number of startups entering the manufacturing field, it is important we share these hard-won insights. As we get the NextGen Industry Group off the ground, I invite you to join us and tell us about the hard-won lessons you've learned as we pursue a new kind of advanced manufacturing excellence together.
