The Production Line

The Production Line

Sometimes the biggest challenge of integration is just getting production to run.

You might think that the purpose of a production line is to run, to make product.

This is a lie. The purpose of the system is what it does, and what it does is rarely if ever to make product.

The purpose of a production line is:

• cost millions of dollars to design, build, maintain, troubleshoot, and operate
• take up valuable acreage in cornfields
• make a variety of noises varying from delightful to despicable
• above all else, to be DOWN™️ in one or more of a myriad of ways

You walk through the security doors into the lobby, and immediately you feel the line. Thrumming, tense with potential. The air already faintly smells of coolant and cutting oil.

You cross the lobby, vast and empty except for the three minutes before end of shift when everyone waits to the second they can clock out. You open the doors into the plant floor and take a step inside.

As your eyes adjust to the OSHA lighting for precision tasks, you hear a symphony. The overhead HVAC circulation system. The rushing coolant supply and return piping. An uncountable number of fans, forcing air through heatsinks to keep computers and servo drives cool. The whine of variable-frequency drives and servos. A repeating ditty rendered in monophonic MIDI in the distance; perhaps "O, Fortuna" or maybe "Für Elise" or even "Toccata in Fugue".

The scent washes over you next. Coolant and cutting oil, of course. But also warm steel and aluminum. Brake cleaner. Maybe some ammonia or simple green. Perhaps the acrid waftings of a cutting torch, grinder, or arc welder. Maybe the whiff of hastily sprayed paint. Depending on the season, also the crisp bite of cold outside air from the docks, or the putrid hint of summer baking something organic that should have been removed months ago.

You feel through the thick, padded soles of your safety shoes the vibrations of a thousand spinning shafts of all sizes, the faint imbalances ebbing and flowing in sync. Perhaps you incorporate the pounding cyclical drum of a press intuitive your heartbeat. Perhaps your hair raises slightly at the fields around a massive drive. Maybe a point jockey forgot the sequence and dropped a part from the extended reach of a robot.

You get to the station for your work. The robot would like to enter Zone 2. The PLC says that Zone 2 is not clear to enter. Zone 2 is ready and visually clear. You confirm to the PLC that Zone 2 is clear. The robot would like to enter Zone 2 but Zone 2 is not clear and the PLC refuses to acknowledge that Zone 2 is ever clear. Zone 2 might not even exist.

You need to run 1,000 parts through your system to prove your system works. Each part should take less than 60 seconds to move through the system. This should take 1,000 minutes then, barring any issues. There are always issues. The team working downstream is teaching new robot points and has blocked the line from running that way. The team working upstream is changing tooling so the system is starved that way. You cannot run parts because there are no parts to run and there are no places to put the parts you do not have.

A alarm goes off in the distance. A series of shouts and cheers erupts. You feel in your bones the weight of a pallet of parts dropping off the end of a conveyor onto the floor.

Zone 2 is not clear.