Over a decade ago, Elon Musk coined a new term for large factories: Gigafactory. Since that time, Tesla has built giga factories in China, Texas and in Germany, with a plant in Mexico to follow soon. The very large manufacturing complex has its origins a century ago with large automakers like Ford, but the trend toward outsourcing of ever larger assemblies suggested a trend toward smaller, decentralized operations. Tesla uses a model geared toward vertical integration, and with the breakdown of supply chains during Covid, keeping more production in-house has shown to have definite advantages.
Is Tesla’s model of very large scale manufacturing the future of all manufacturing?
Fictiv CEO
Dave Evans comments in conversation with Jim Anderton.
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