---
title: "The algorithm"
description: "Musk's five-step production mantra for any product or process, with the order mattering."
canonical: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/elon-musk/the-algorithm/
updated: 2026-11-03
---

# The algorithm

> 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.

Framework 4 of 7 from [Elon Musk](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/elon-musk/index.md) by Walter Isaacson. Category: Content and packaging.

## The steps

1. **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.
2. **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.
3. **Simplify and optimize.** Only after deleting, since a common mistake is optimising a part or process that should not exist.
4. **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.
5. **Automate.** Last of all, once requirements are questioned, parts and processes deleted and bugs shaken out.

## Where it comes from

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.

## The animation

24 seconds, 4:5, no sound.

- MP4: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/the-algorithm.mp4
- MP4, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/the-algorithm-dark.mp4
- Still: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/the-algorithm.png
- Still, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/the-algorithm-dark.png