What I Learned About Manufacturing From Elon Musk

This blog is written by Caitlin Bigelow. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.??

---??

Read the full article on VBC's Off-Site Builder Blog site: https://www.vbc.co/blog/what-i-learned-about-manufacturing-from-elon-musk

---??

Despite what you may think of Elon Musk personally, he’s the most successful entrepreneur of the 21st century.??

Tesla, worth $850 Billion.?

SpaceX, worth $150 Billion.??

The Boring Company, worth $5.7 Billion.?

Nueralink, worth $5 Billion.??

?

…and X, (Twitter) worth $19 Billion (paid $44 Billion).??

Proof that you can’t win them all.??

?

As I read through Isaacson’s biography of Musk I found myself bookmarking pages, scribbling in the margins, and highlighting sections I found particularly relevant to manufacturing industries.??

?

Before we dive in on my personal takeaways after reading 667 pages, I think it’s important to note that volumetric construction is a vastly different product than cars or spaceships. Michael Marcs, an interim CEO at Tesla who went on to found Katerra, learned that the hard way.??

Regardless of the differences, there are lessons to be learned. Here are some of my personal takeaways that can be applied to any manufacturing industry.?

Build a Constant Feedback Loop from Design to Manufacturing.

Whether you’re building a rocket ship or a building, there are thousands of design decisions that need to be made. Musk felt it imperative that design and engineering teams understand how their decisions impacted manufacturing.

The two metrics he optimized above all else were cost and throughput. His complete obsession was critical to propelling Tesla and SpaceX into multi-billion-dollar companies.?

Within the theme of feedback loops, he focused on two metrics about all else:

1. Throughput??
2. Cost

To continue reading the rest of this article, click here.