Toyota's Takaoka #2 Line: The Most Flexible Line in the World

I don't doubt the line is much more efficient and flexible as claimed, but the article doesn't do a very good job explaining exactly how the gains are achieved beyond hand-waving about clever contraptions that are faster than robots and the ability to dynamically move stations around. It seems difficult to imagine that hordes of industrial engineers haven't done the calculations on each of these methods countless times at all car manufacturing companies. There must be deeper, more subtle factors that explain why Toyota's particular combination of techniques yields such superior results. Perhaps it's just the culmination of a lot of long-tail optimizations that only Toyota has had time and capital to let mature or maybe there really is just "one secret trick" that underpins it all - the article doesn't really give a good sense of what it might be. In either case it'd be interesting to see a detailed breakdown with numbers comparing the various lines with explanations for why particular decisions were or weren't made to truly understand why the system works so well.

I know that car analogies for software is an over-done metaphor but while reading this article I&#x27;m thinking of heavy processes for software deployment that are hard to change and in my mind I&#x27;m screaming &quot;this is what agile looks like!&quot;<p>Processes and controls are very important for quality, but as business goals shift and evolve, the processes also need to evolve. But designing processes that can evolve gracefully is not a trivial task, especially in risk-averse organizations.

What I would&#x27;ve loved to see is the comparative efficacy captured in motion for (lets say) a &quot;layman&#x27;s observation&quot; of production. Just a glimpse into how it works out on the &quot;flexible line&quot;

“They would tell you that robots are great for repetitive tasks like welding, or painting, but they fail at picking and handling small parts.” Are robots really that bad nowadays? I imagine, it would be a problem in VGA-only camera years. Now we have tens of megapixels, lidars, tons of computing power (cheap!).

Takaoka Line 2, when Category Theory meets auto manufacturing. Love the carts they move cars on. Curious if Tesla attempts such a line next.

&gt; &quot;After pulling a few strings to get into the Takaoka plant, you will see the Gordian knot become untied.&quot;<p>Um... the Gordian knot was not untied, but rather cut by a sword. It&#x27;s supposed to be a bold, out-of-the-box solution to a seemingly impossible problem. I don&#x27;t know if the author of the article chose the wrong word on purpose.