Tesla Work Experience
Production Control Intern
Tesla, Inc. | Fremont, CA (May 2024 - August 2024)
As a Production Control Intern at Tesla, I had the opportunity to work on a project that involved automating internal material handling processes in the General Assembly (GA) area. My primary focus was on analyzing the current processes, routes, and headcounts to identify areas for cost savings and efficiency improvements. I collaborated with various teams to gather data and insights, which helped me develop a proposal for implementing Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) to optimize material handling operations. Through simulation and analysis, I was able to determine the optimal number of AMRs needed for the GA3 process routes, ultimately leading to a significant reduction in headcount and improved operational efficiency.
Situation
After removing the Dematic Fixed automation solution from warehouse to GA3 lifters, all the processes were dependent on the internal material handling labor. This inherently caused a lot of delays in the process and increased the headcount for the internal material handling labor. There was alot of inefficiency in delivering the material to the site because of redundant buffer zones due to the labor dependency. One of the such sites was delivering door trims to the lifters in GA3. The aisles and highways are very narrow and congested as they were not designed for manual material handling.
Task
Once the situation was analyzed, the next step was to identify possible ways to eliminate the recurring costs on this GA line. The recurring cost in this case was the manpower—three workers per shift across four shifts. The door t rim racks were extremely heavy, leading to frequent ergonomic issues for the labor force. Additionally, due to the continuous heavy maneuvering of these racks, associates would become fatigued over time, resulting in careless handling and ultimately causing mechanical damage to the dollies. Hence to address this issue, the only way to work around was to automate door trim delivery process using felixible automation that is Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)/(AGVs). How the question was its feasibility and how many AMRs are needed?
Action
To address the issue, I proposed a solution to automate the door trim delivery process using Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). The first step was to analyze the current process routes, station QPC, QPV, Frequency and identify the best routes for the AMRs. Then I proposed these routes to all the stateholders such as Process team, Induatrial engineering Team, Mechanical Equipment team, EHS, EPC teams and noted all the risks that each team forcasted in the plan proposed. I rivised the routes and processes considering all the feedback from the teams. With the help of my manager's approval I was able to contact the AMR vendorrs with the required RFQs and the AMR vendors were able to propose the solution. Next step was evaluation of the AMR vendors and Validation of the AMR solution.
Result
I am grateful to my manager for introducing me to and granting access to the Confluence
pages, which allowed me to explore how other departments were conducting material handling
analyses. This access provided valuable insights into best practices and techniques used
across Tesla facilities worldwide. Through this, I discovered that other plants utilized
the FlexSim software tool to validate processes and conduct time studies before
implementation on the GA line.
Going beyond my role, I proactively reached out to Nevada’s Material Flow team to request
access to the software and
training. I quickly learned FlexSim and successfully simulated the process to validate the
AMR solution. This enabled me to determine the optimal number of AMRs required and the most
efficient routes for them. Additionally, I assessed vendor-proposed AMR solutions to evaluate
their reliability.
Ultimately, I compiled my findings into a business case for the AMR solution which
resulted into ROI of less than 2 years and presented it to the management team.