Macintosh Factory

What Hacker News said

Recommends mietek · 2018-12 · on “Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess”

This would have been a content-free article if not for the beautiful photos. Here’s a video tour of the Macintosh factory that used to be in Fremont, CA: [this video]

Cites Animats · 2016-12 · on “Foxconn boosting automated production in China”

Keep reading. "There are 10 lights-out (fully automated) production lines at some factories, including table one in Chengdu, AIO (all-in-one) PC and LCD monitor lines at a factory in Chongqing, and a CNC line in Zhengzhou. ... Foxconn has deployed more than 40,000 Foxbots, industrial robots developed and produced in house, at factories in China." The Chengdu plant makes iPads.[1] Foxconn refers to "table one" because they usually don't name their contract manufacturing clients. Apple used to have robotic assembly lines in Fremont, CA.[2] Then they switched to cheap outsourced manual labor. [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]

Cites Animats · 2018-04 · on “Experts say Tesla has repeated car industry mistakes from the 1980s”

Auto final assembly lines make about a car a minute. Some run a little faster, some a little slower. About 500 cars per shift. 2 shifts a day, 6 days a week will get you to 6,000. Beyond that, you need another assembly line. Going to 3 production shifts is rare; you need some maintenance downtime. This doesn't work like a growth curve. Once you get it working, an assembly line produces at a constant rate. Tesla's low output indicates serious downtime problems. They've shut down for some line rework, which is probably a good move. There's still no discussion of the Fremont plant's problems from someone who has both access and the knowledge to understand what they're seeing. So everybody is st

Cites Animats · 2021-04 · on “Limiting Work in Progress (2020)”

The first and most important question of course is to understand that having too much WIP is in fact bad. This is a well-understood concept in factories. Not enough people today have ever been in a factory. It's a classic problem with manufacturing plants that make a large number of different items. There, it's obvious - you have racks or piles or bins of partially finished product sitting around. Yet you can't avoid some of that, because machines have setup and teardown times. So you make a thousand stampings of thing A, which then wait for the next step. If you only made a lot of 100, there would be less work in progress, but more time the stamping machine wasn't running while the dies wer

Cites scrlk · 2025-04 · on “Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess (2018)”

Steve invested heavily in automation for the Mac and NeXT factories. There are videos of these factories in action: We Are Manufacturing (Apple): [this video] The Machine to Build the Machines (NeXT): [LINK] Infamously, he caused a ton of issues for both factories when he demanded that the machinery be painted to colours of his liking. > When Jobs took a tour, he ordered that the machines be repainted in the bright colors he wanted. Carter objected; this was precision equipment, and repainting the machines could cause problems. He turned out to be right. One of the most expensive machines, which got painted bright blue, ended up not working properly and was dubbed “Steve’s Folly.” Finally Carter