I haven’t seen this linked:
Agile at Tesla, by Joe Justice
Joe is apparently a big name in agile, and in this video he details how Tesla does agile. I recommend watching it, there are a lot of details, including how Elon works at Tesla, plus some SpaceX stuff in the end (which is still relevant, as all Musk companies use these methods). The start is a bit slow, and there’s some humblebrag moments.
Thank you so much.
I thought I had soaked up every scrap of information on Tesla available on the internet. I thought I couldn't get more bullish. Little did I know this channel was out there.
I watched a different Joe Justice video just now in which he said that Tesla runs the agile method on a
3 hour sprint cycle with
12 hour work shifts.
A mind-blowing example of their agility was his description of the Giga Nevada construction process
--> Buy land
--> In the very next sprint--literally the next one--move everyone that was in some warehouse experimenting with battery production into a cheap popup sprung tent on the land
--> In the next sprint after the tent is set up, start setting up production equipment
--> Then as soon as physically possible after that, start constructing the building around the tent.
-->Have construction workers, building design engineers and manufacturing engineers ask the people in the tent what they need and feedback on their design of the future production line
every single hour 24/7 until the job is done.
--> Design the manufacturing line based on how the work in the tent is going.
--> Then, when that modular square of the factory is done, if production speed does not immediately increase, in the first sprint, upon activation of the line...rip out the offending equipment and start over because that means you failed.
Upon completion of each square of the building, move the tent to an adjacent spot and start the same process over with another portion of the production system.
This reminds me of how at AI Day, Elon commented that the goal of Dojo and sole metric of its success is if the Training team wants to stop using the old training hardware. I now realize he probably meant that Dojo is expected to improve productivity within
hours of going online.
When Elon says that advanced manufacturing is going to be Tesla's long-term competitive advantage, I thought with my manufacturing background and religious watching of Munro Live teardowns that I knew what Elon meant. On some level I did understand, but this is on a higher level than I even knew was possible.