Mercedes Boots Robots from the Production Line

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.

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.

&gt; We’re saving money and safeguarding our future by making a good PR move<p>FTFY.<p>Seriously though, the only reason is because they are customizing and non-intelligent robots are not good at making variations.<p>This doesn&#x27;t solve the fundamental problem coming of robots who <i>can</i> handle variation.<p>And as encoderer noted, this is a niche luxury market.

&gt;“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.”<p>it sounds like they just have bad software<p>it&#x27;s not like there are random variations or an uncontrolled environment.<p>in the end there&#x27;s still only a finite menu of options. don&#x27;t they just need better software for combining the options?<p>like... it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job?

...Marketer-speak meaning it erodes the &quot;je ne sais quoi&quot;, 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).

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.

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?

I&#x27;m curious to know if the workers replacing the robots will be German.

ohh... &quot;boot&quot; as in &quot;remove&quot;