Mercedes Boots Robots from the Production Line

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-25/why-mercedes-is-halting-robots-reign-on-the-production-line

by monort • 10 years ago

56 53 10 years ago

The rapid updating of car models is either going to be a success or blow up in the car manufacturers face. The sales of cars has been high over the past few years, but economically sustaining car sales year and adding growth year of year is not feasible with the current model of purchasing and holding onto a car as a long term liable asset. Newer business models will be needed to make this shift for newer model sales on a smaller time frame. I see a big push for leasing coming.

alexhawdon• 10 years ago

This is already happening, at least in the UK. I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise.

branchless3• 10 years ago

All part of the culture of debt forever.

bsder• 10 years ago

I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise.

At least in the US, the problem is that if you total the car during your lease, you owe the remaining value of the car. That makes leasing an absolutely horrible decision in the US--all the downside of buying a car with none of the upside.

How is the UK dealing with that?

tedchs• 10 years ago

Article seems to speak out both sides of its mouth, that robots are going away for Mercedes, and also that tons of small robots are being added. Anybody else get that takeaway?

bnegreve• 10 years ago

I think the takeaway is:

Humans assisted with robots are superior to just robots when the variety is high.

agarden• 10 years ago

Yup. Though I have to think that people are also more likely to make a mistake and your custom car might show up with the standard cup holder when you ordered the heated. The robot might be inefficient at doing the variety of tasks required for such customization, but it is certainly better at keeping track of just what ought to be done.

thehoff• 10 years ago

My takeaway:

They are removing robots that are cordoned off into areas to keep workers safe. These robots are not very good at customizing/changing quickly.

What they are being replaced with is people and much smaller robots that work side-by-side with those people. Assisting more than trying to do it all.

melling• 10 years ago

Sounds like a business opportunity to build better robots.

xiphias• 10 years ago

Isn't this just the consequence of booming luxury car sales as the rich-poor gap widens?

http://fortune.com/2015/02/17/luxury-car-sales/

Luxury car brands get more sales therefore they need to compete fast and don't have time for automation.

lsv1• 10 years ago

I'm curious to know if the workers replacing the robots will be German.

crispyambulance• 10 years ago

ohh... "boot" as in "remove"

taneq2• 10 years ago

CHAIN "ROBOTS" hits 'return' key

thomasedwards• 10 years ago

A cheaper way of solving this problem would to be to make the cars less complicated. Just offer colour variants and give every option included in the base model. Economies of scale will create your profits.

saiya-jin• 10 years ago

something tells me sales would plummet?

one example out of many - what about various gearboxes? some people swear by automats, I would not want such a car for free. leather/fabric interior, various suspension setups (hard & more enjoyable vs comfy & puddy). various light options (each has pros and cons). tyres size, rims design. etc etc etc.

I am pretty damn sure I want a different car than you, ignoring color.

tonyedgecombe• 10 years ago

All those extra complications are really about extra profits for the manufacturer, there is no way they will give them up.

taneq2• 10 years ago

People who buy custom spec'd Mercedes don't want cars that base-model plebs can afford. The options aren't there to increase the feature set, they're there to make the buyers feel special.

shepardrtc• 10 years ago

Or maybe people just like to customize their cars. Like the teenager with the Civic and the neon lights, or the guy with the Jeep and the big tires.

pc864• 10 years ago

No they're not. They are there because someone in Minnesota will almost certainly spend $500 on heated seats and thank you for the privilege while someone in Miami won't.

pc864• 10 years ago

That's no different than suggesting that computers be identical except for the color.

encoderer2• 10 years ago

On the Mercedes AMG performance line, a single master craftsman builds the engine by himself. His signature is on the engine block. Mercedes doing something like this is interesting but they are a niche, luxury manufacturer (though they are the largest luxury brand at least in the us and maybe world wide). A change like this at Toyota would be more interesting to me.

ben010783• 10 years ago

The best selling luxury manufacturer in the US is BMW. They're followed by Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, but those two aren't far behind either. Toyota took a similar approach to how AMG cars are created when they made the Lexus LFA. They only built 500 models of the LFA, but those were all custom ordered and buyers had a huge array of options to choose from: http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/v2/img/models/LFA/explore/L...

encoderer2• 10 years ago

http://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-un...

dsfyu404ed2• 10 years ago

I don't think I'd use the phrase "master craftsman" unless my paycheck came from their marketing dept.

Being able to do a high quality, consistent job assembling engine after engine is not a huge feat, it just takes a lot of attention to detail. Being able to spec out and effectively execute a particular engine build is on a whole different level and the latter is what I'd be more inclined to call a "craftsman"

The former doesn't need to care (but they likely do since anyone with that job probably does automotive stuff as a hobby) about things like how camshaft specs, rod length, piston velocity, intake design and about a million other variables interact with each other to affect performance of the whole system. The latter needs to be intimately familiar with them while also being able to do the job of the former.

To put it in terms more people on HN will understand, the guy assembling the engine is like the user of some backed software stack. Sure they might write some scripts that interact with parts of the stack but they're nowhere near as well versed in how does what it does and why it does things the way it does when compared to the engineer who designed and built the stack.

arrrg• 10 years ago

„Meister“ (literally “master” in English) is just the certificate you get after finishing some vocational trainings in Germany (includes theory and practice).

Vocational training is still somewhat widespread in Germany (for jobs like mechanics, hairdressers, even sys admins, some more rote programming jobs, …) also as an alternative to going to university.

Now, I’m not sure whether typical assembly line workers have that kind of education (probably not? but I’m not sure), so having someone with this kind of education assemble your engine for you might be a step up, but I also think there is a mismatch going on here between what the English words seem to imply and what the German word means.

anentropic2• 10 years ago

A change like this at Toyota would be more interesting to me.

from 2014: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-06/humans-rep...

nihonde• 10 years ago

Yes, I came to make this comment. Toyota has been very vocal about making this change. The rationale from Mr. Toyoda himself was something like:

(1) Robots are not great at improving on their own work in the same way that humans naturally are.

(2) When he was a boy, Mr. Toyoda recalled that there were always a few men around the factory who were capable of extremely creative and ingenious solutions to difficult problems of logistics or fabrication, and he feels that this skill is being lost.

Anyway, this has been a major consideration for the current management at Toyota for some time.

Justsignedup2• 10 years ago

We’re saving money and safeguarding our future by making a good PR move

FTFY.

Seriously though, the only reason is because they are customizing and non-intelligent robots are not good at making variations.

This doesn't solve the fundamental problem coming of robots who can handle variation.

And as encoderer noted, this is a niche luxury market.

Justsignedup2• 10 years ago

Exactly right. But they are selling it like some miracle anti-technology movement.

anentropic2• 10 years ago

“The variety is too much to take on for the machines,” said Schaefer, who’s pushing to reduce the hours needed to produce a car to 30 from 61 in 2005. “They can’t work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.”

it sounds like they just have bad software

it's not like there are random variations or an uncontrolled environment.

in the end there's still only a finite menu of options. don't they just need better software for combining the options?

like... it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job?

bryanlarsen• 10 years ago

it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job?

Exactly. The S-Class is not exactly a high volume vehicle, and it has a huge number of options. Given the low number of vehicles and the combinatorial explosion of different option combinations, it's quite possible that a custom S-Class is unique.

pc864• 10 years ago

Ford sold more Focus models in June 2015 than Mercedes sold S-Class models in the entire year.[0, 1]

[0] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mercedes-benz-s-class-s...

[1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/ford-focus-sales-figure...

a_thro_away• 10 years ago

...Marketer-speak meaning it erodes the "je ne sais quoi", that which is undefinable, about very expensive, often hand-made, goods. That is the real reason - how can you persuade big spenders that something is unique and valuable if it came from a factory, a robot? even if said quality may be demonstrably superior? (edit:said inferior).

Mercedes Boots Robots from the Production Line

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