Carsy

" Mercedes Benz has reconfigured their main plant in Germany ( Sindelfingen near Stuttgart ) to put more human beings on the production line on S Class and E Class manufacturing. Smaller robots are being, and have been, installed to work WITH people, and not to replace them. Seems like, in MB's market segment, there are too many customer selected options required to be competitive, so that robots cannot make the small custom changes needed........ Little details like how the coffee cup holder is supposed to work, details on interior trim ,etc .. are all custom per individual car. Also, they have discovered that they might make their goal of 30 hours per car production time, coming down from 61 hours, using people to pick/choose/install parts, and do this and that detail. MB claims that more frequent model changes will have to be made in todays market ..... no more 7 year runs between changes . and changing the production line can be done in HALF the time needed to reprogram all the computers, robots and other non human elements. MORE JOBS FOR PEOPLE USING NEW TECHNOLOGY . NOT REPLACING PEOPLE !! "

ghlkal

Interesting.

Do you have a source for this?

michail71

Well, being a programmer I could argue there are plenty of opportunities for the engineers to get the reprogramming time down and proactively assist the floor workers better too. There are jobs there as well. In the end technology needs to be there for the person. It should be thought of as technology allowing people to do their jobs better.

I'm not too sure about shorter model cycles. But I would like to see upgradeability exist for models already produced like Tesla does. Long model cycles have some benefit. If we had different bodies and powertrains ever couple years things could get to be a mess, parts and repair costs go up.

But this is interesting. The old, established manufacturers need to get their act together before the likes of Elon Musk turn them into fossils.

Carsy

Here are two :-_It was also in the Australian Financial Review this weekend. http://www.afr.com/business/transpor...0160225-gn47mo

http://www.beacontranscript.com/tag/mercedes-benz/

JohnnyC300

Sounds good to me. I wonder what will happen when the autonomous cars enter the markets.