Tesla has reportedly put a temporary stoppage on the Model S and Model X production line, as the company shifts focus to ramping its Model 3 production numbers by end of the quarter.
According to a Bloomberg report, an email from Tesla’s vice president of production, Peter Hochholdinger, revealed that the company is stopping the production line of the all-electric luxury sedan and SUV on Thursday and Friday. According to the executive, Tesla is already ahead of its goals for the Model S and X. With this in mind, a “limited” number of workers assigned to the flagship vehicles would be given the option to help out the Model 3 line from Thursday to Saturday.
Updated: A Tesla spokesperson tells Teslarati that the temporary shutdown of the Model S and Model X production line is taking place only on Friday and unrelated to Model 3.
Hochholdinger’s message, which was reportedly sent to employees on March 21, was supported by another email from Doug Field, Tesla’s senior vice president of engineering. Field’s email, which was also acquired by Bloomberg, urged the company’s workers in the Model 3 line to push towards producing 300 cars a day. The executive stated that if Tesla can hit the 300/day milestone, it would be an “incredible victory” for everyone at the company.
Field’s email also included a bold challenge to Tesla’s employees as well, stating that amidst the doubts being cast into the company today, workers should push to prove their doubters wrong.
“I find that personally insulting, and you should too. Let’s make them regret ever betting against us. You will prove a bunch of haters wrong. The world is watching us very closely, to understand one thing: How many Model 3’s can Tesla build in a week? This is a critical moment in Tesla’s history, and there are a number of reasons it’s so important. You should pick the one that hits you in the gut and makes you want to win.”
Fields’ email mentioned that at the time of his writing, the Elon Musk-led company is making roughly 200 Model 3 a day on every line. The executive urged employees to break the 300 units per day barrier, and keep pushing toward that goal. Fields issued a reminder as well, however, stating that workers on the Model 3 line must keep quality standards high.
As we noted in a previous report, Tesla’s stocks (NASDAQ: TSLA) have recently taken a deep dive, with shares in the company dropping to a 52-week low amidst questions about the company’s ability to ramp Model 3 production, and new clues surfacing from the ongoing NTSB investigation involving a fiery, deadly Model X crash. Midway through Thursday trading, however, TSLA stocks have begun bouncing back, trading at $264.50 from the day’s $256.49 opening.
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Seems odd request to me. I thought this assembly line was highly automated and was not so constrained by humans. I was under the impression that the automation equipment failures or required tuning was the reason production quotas have not been reached in the past. Urging workers to work faster usually results in more mistakes.
Theory of constraints holds that production can only move as fast as the slowest operation. For now, we still need humans to analyze where the bottlenecks are and address them.
