Macintosh Factory

What people said

mietek · 2018-12 · Recommendation

This would have been a content-free article if not for the beautiful photos. Here’s a video tour of the Macintosh factory that used to be in Fremont, CA: [VIDEO]

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scrlk · 2025-04 · Reference

Steve invested heavily in automation for the Mac and NeXT factories. There are videos of these factories in action: We Are Manufacturing (Apple): [VIDEO] The Machine to Build the Machines (NeXT): [LINK] Infamously, he caused a ton of issues for both factories when he demanded that the machinery be painted to colours of his liking. > When Jobs took a tour, he ordered that the machines be repainted in the bright colors he wanted. Carter objected; this was precision equipment, and repainting the machines could cause problems. He turned out to be right. One of the most expensive machines, which got painted bright blue, ended up not working properly and was dubbed “Steve’s Folly.” Finally Carter quit. “It took so much energy to fight him, and it was usually over something so pointless that finally I had enough,” he recalled. [0] > Jobs demanded that all the robots in the NeXT manufacturing plant be painted in coordinated shades of gray and black. 2 of his top manufacturing engineers worked through a weekend to paint the assembly line, repeating the process 4 times until they got the finish just right. [1] Ultimately, even that significant automation investment couldn't overcome the core challenges that other commenters have pointed out. I find the culture aspect ironic. Deming was American, yet American manufacturers largely ignored him until the Japanese applied his methods and began outcompeting everyone. [0] [LINK] [1] [LINK]

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Animats · 2021-04 · Reference

The first and most important question of course is to understand that having too much WIP is in fact bad. This is a well-understood concept in factories. Not enough people today have ever been in a factory. It's a classic problem with manufacturing plants that make a large number of different items. There, it's obvious - you have racks or piles or bins of partially finished product sitting around. Yet you can't avoid some of that, because machines have setup and teardown times. So you make a thousand stampings of thing A, which then wait for the next step. If you only made a lot of 100, there would be less work in progress, but more time the stamping machine wasn't running while the dies were changed. If you made a lot of 10,000, the stamping machine's efficiency would be higher but you'd have more work in progress. So, what's the optimal lot size? This is a classic business school problem.[1] There's a whole theory of this, dating back to 1913. Apple is famous for having botched this with their Macintosh factory in Fremont.[2] They centered their factory around an automated storage and retrieval system. This meant they could buffer a lot of work in process without making a visible mess. Wrong approach. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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