Munro to help Rivian with production speed

[Cosmacelf]

Queued up at the important bit about Rivian. Looks like Rivian has hired Munro & Associates to help them with manufacturing redesign so that they can build their vehicles faster.

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[atebit]

Wait, I thought he was just good at taking them apart?

 

[R1Sky Business]

All right, now we can get excited about panel gaps!!!!!

 

[dleepnw]

Wait, I thought he was just good at taking them apart?

haha, thats def true, but as he takes them apart he definitely notices areas for improvements in design, which impacts production as well as costs. this is a good thing imo.

but... at the same time, wasn't hiring that dude from Magna supposed to accelerate production? maybe his resignation is coming shortly.

 

[SANZC02]

haha, thats def true, but as he takes them apart he definitely notices areas for improvements in design, which impacts production as well as costs. this is a good thing imo.

but... at the same time, wasn't hiring that dude from Magna supposed to accelerate production? maybe his resignation is coming shortly.

The contract for Monroe probably is coming from him. One of the first things I would have done is get someone in to focus on the build process and find low hanging fruit in the assembly process. After that would come the deeper dive looking for design changes that would streamline the assembly process.

They had some good comments during the tear downs, have not seen a video from them in a couple of months, I wonder if this is why.

 

[SeaGeo]

haha, thats def true, but as he takes them apart he definitely notices areas for improvements in design, which impacts production as well as costs. this is a good thing imo.

but... at the same time, wasn't hiring that dude from Magna supposed to accelerate production? maybe his resignation is coming shortly.

If your COO is actively digging into details of manufacturing optimization design they're probably not doing their actual job.

 

[BigE]

Queued up at the important bit about Rivian. Looks like Rivian has hired Munro & Associates to help them with manufacturing redesign so that they can build their vehicles faster.

This makes a lot of sense for Rivian to hire Munro and also why Munro has killed their R1T tear down..

 

[Longreach]

They had some good comments during the tear downs, have not seen a video from them in a couple of months, I wonder if this is why.

That is exactly why.

Munro’s business is selling production & design advice, the YouTube videos are more of an advertisement of their capabilities. You can be sure the contract included a confidentiality clause which is to silence YouTube exposure of design disasters such as a door panel with 120+ fasteners. We will not see any more Rivian tear down videos from Munro.

On the plus side, there will be improvements on R1 manufacturability, and more importantly, R2 physical design, engineering and manufacturing cost. Unfortunately Munro expertise doesn’t extend to the electrical architecture, which may mean R2 is stuck with the same wasteful idle mode energy losses as R1. Rivian needs to get their own “war on power consumption” cultural change to address that problem.

 

[MoreTrout]

Unless Munro can somehow magically fix global supply chain problems, he isn't going to do squat about increasing production numbers in the near term. Long term it will certainly streamline and help them with future models and improvements to the R1 line, but the current design has next to nothing to do with how many they are able to produce right now or this year.

 

[Rivian_Hugh_III]

Unless Munro can somehow magically fix global supply chain problems, he isn't going to do squat about increasing production numbers in the near term. Long term it will certainly streamline and help them with future models and improvements to the R1 line, but the current design has next to nothing to do with how many they are able to produce right now or this year.

If you can replace 7 parts with one part I would think that would generally help lessen pressure on the supply chain. The issues go beyond "we need chip A and don’t have it." Look at the interior wood issues As an example. Processes required can affect supply available… one would think.

 

[crashmtb]

This makes a lot of sense for Rivian to hire Munro and also why Munro has killed their R1T tear down..

The whole point of their YouTube stuff is to get OEMS/suppliers to buy their reports.
pthat it gets a bunch of normal people frothing at the mouth and giving them money on patreon for some reason is a bonus.

 

[Zoidz]

but... at the same time, wasn't hiring that dude from Magna supposed to accelerate production? maybe his resignation is coming shortly.

If your COO is actively digging into details of manufacturing optimization design they're probably not doing their actual job.

Why all the negative comments about Rivian people failing or not doing their job? Another perspective is that "the dude from Magna" knew he had to find the bottlenecks to accelerate production, drove his team to identify the problems areas, and chose to bring in a subject matter expert with outside knowledge and perspective. I know from experience that's how it works more often than not. Our small engineering company has extensive specific industry knowledge and get calls from small to Fortune 500 companies all the time asking for help in our area of expertise, including COOs and CEOs who are taking the bull by the horns to solve a problem.

 

[COdogman]

I don’t see any downside to this. Big manufacturers (of anything) are always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their process, as they should be. Even if all Munro does is show Rivian how they can do the same thing with the same parts more quickly, it is worth it. We are talking about a company with 98,000 orders waiting.

 

[Zoidz]

Unless Munro can somehow magically fix global supply chain problems, he isn't going to do squat about increasing production numbers in the near term. Long term it will certainly streamline and help them with future models and improvements to the R1 line, but the current design has next to nothing to do with how many they are able to produce right now or this year.

That's just not true. Many production line issues are related to procedural, material or training problems. Simply changing the type or composition of a fastener and it's installation technique in one work cell could shave 15 to 30 seconds off an assembly procedure. Make similar improvements at 10, 20 or 30 assembly processes, and you've improved vehicle build time by 5 minutes or more. Identify and eliminate assembly problems that cause vehicles to be moved to a rework area and you save thousands of dollars and hours of time every week.

 

[ads75]

but... at the same time, wasn't hiring that dude from Magna supposed to accelerate production? maybe his resignation is coming shortly.

Do you really think someone gets hired and production timing changes in a matter of weeks?

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