Manufacturing: An Underrated Field
Look around you, the chair, the table, the pen, pencil, bottle, watch, fans, lights, utensils, wires, chargers, clothes, and packed food!
Even the Laptop or Mobile you are staring at right now to read this Medium Post!
Is the result of Manufacturing!
I am a Manufacturing Engineer, I can write very well about the topic. It is everywhere and will be there till the last day of this planet!
What makes me sad is it is a very Underrated topic and also Misunderstood!
Miss understood to an extent that most of the time those who are studying and even those who are teaching it don’t really understand what is the core or crux of the subject they want to convey and how that would benefit the student. (Especially in India)
We all know Elon Musk is famous for his tweets, and his interest in dogecoin, taking humans to Mars, and investing in an electric future with the legendary Tesla and SpaceX.
The world is inspired by the cool stuff that is being presented in the media. Ohh How sexy looking is that Model S, Ohh these rockets land on a plume of flame and are reusable! Ohh the dragon spacecraft is so futuristic! It's the design that always gets the charm!
We often miss out, on what it takes to make it manufacture it!
Elon, in an interview[1] with Tim Dod the Everyday Astraunaut said
Design in Overrated and Manufacturing is Underrated
He publicly condemns the fact that manufacturing is not like making software! It is much much more Capital Intensive! Press machines, Blanking Machines, and Large CNC Machines cost Million of dollars! You require a new machine for each set of operations that leads to the final product!
The Universities
This is why it is hard to learn! Cause most universities can’t afford to put that capital in purchase this kind of machine! There are generally few basic Lathe machines, A few milling machines, very few drill presses, One metal cutting machine, and A foundry in which we never melt a metal cause they can’t afford to buy a safe furnace, or even if they do, they don’t afford to recruit a teacher who is expert enough to handle basic casting procedures.
Yes, there are books that teach theories but this stuff requires hands-on experience that can only come from doing practicals!
I remember a big Room Sized 3D printer Installed on our campus. All we listned to were stories about it that it cost more than a Crore Rupees, It functioned well for a year then one part stopped working replacing that required a few more lakhs of capital and a lot of intensive processes to pass that bill from the institute which is government. It never got serviced and went out of function.
The OLA Electric Story | Elon Musk of India?
Bhavish Aggarwal the CEO of Ola Electric was a Software Engineer. His Ola Cabs business was a great success. He entered the Electric Space and started Ola Electric in 2018 as the EV Revolution of India. He first kept the launching deadline highly Unrealistic[2]and then kept pushing it! The first delivery was supposed to be made in July but was delivered in late December 2021!
And what came next was a storm of unhappy customers! Multiple complaints regarding broken body, Software issues, Battery Fire Issues, and Scooter going in reverse when accelerated!
Some former ola executives revealed that scooters weren’t ready, and neither was the registering website for which Ola hired an engineer and tasked him to make the website go functioning overnight! He was then fired the next day when Bhavish extended the deadline by publishing a notice in a tweet[3].
Another former employee[4] said that
He is the kind of man who thinks it is possible to have a child in one month.
Most of the top Executives left the company saying that it was not possible to meet the unrealistic deadlines set by the CEO. He needs to understand that Manufacturing is Different from making Software!
The iPhone
Ever thought why the iPhone is so costly? Apart from Research & Development, their manufacturing process is an expensive one. The whole body structure is carefully machined by CNC machining an Aluminium slab! While other cheap mobile phone brands like Xiaomi rely on Sheet metal covering.
Machining is time-consuming and capital intensive! To meet the demand you have to install thousands of them in a factory and let them work simultaneously!
Suppose machining above[5] 1 phone takes 1 hour! You need 1000 of them to work simultaneously to make 1000 frames at the end of the hour. As I said earlier CNC machine is costly! Millions of Dollars are required to set up a plant!
Whereas a cheap brand can produce 1000 of them in 1 hour from a single machine! All they need is a punching machine! A figure[6]is shown below for the same!
What Is Manufacturing Then?
Value at scale is the simplest answer! It is easy to make a single product that would be costly, It’s tough to make it for the masses keeping in mind that it needs to be affordable! No one would buy a 100$ pencil.
To produce good quality products for the masses is Art and keeping in mind to reduce its cost is Economics!
I Went too ahead while answering that question. I hope this post will make an impact on your understanding of manufacturing and you will also spread the underrated hidden gem. Because there is nothing without manufacturing.
Do let me know if this was an insightful post by clapping/commenting on it! If still, you have any doubt you are free to reach out to me!
Do share it so that more people can praise and understand Manufacturing!
Thanks for Reading!
I am Piyush Sharma.
Footnotes
[1] https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=229
[2] Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola — The Morning Context
[3] Bhavish Aggarwal on Twitter
[4] The hazards of Ola Electric’s need for speed — The Ken
[6] https://www.globalsources.com/si/AS/Dongguan-Anli/6008809824272/pdtl/Sheet-metal-parts/1150190170.htm
