Musk's five-step production mantra for any product or process, with the order mattering.
Walter Isaacson's framework, from Elon Musk, pp. 331 to 345.
Question every requirement
Attach the name of a real person to each requirement, never a department, then question it however smart the person is, even if it is Musk, and make it less dumb.
Delete any part or process you can
Delete freely and add back later; if you do not end up adding back at least 10 percent, you did not delete enough.
Simplify and optimize
Only after deleting, since a common mistake is optimising a part or process that should not exist.
Accelerate cycle time
Speed up every process, but only after the first three steps; Musk wasted time speeding up processes that should have been deleted.
Automate
Last of all, once requirements are questioned, parts and processes deleted and bugs shaken out.
From chapter: Chapter 46: Fremont Factory Hell: Tesla, 2018, pp. 331–345
With Nevada easing, Musk moves to Fremont in April 2018, where short-sellers bet against Tesla and he promises five thousand Model 3s a week by June. He walks the floor to the red lights, makes a hundred command decisions a day, rewrites bolt-driver settings himself, deletes butyl patches and sensors, then orders every unnecessary robot removed in seventy-two hours. A giant tent line, built in three weeks, helps hit the target on 1 July. He distils the lessons into a five-step algorithm and a set of corollaries.
