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Today Tesla Giga Shanghai is the most efficient of the company’s factories in the world. The secrets of this lie in the optimized factory design, workforce, management, and location.
The Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai covers an area of about 860,000 square meters or about 120 standard football fields. Compared to the company's other factories in the world, this is a relatively small area. However, Giga Shanghai is the most efficient Tesla factory. Here, the installed annual production capacity is over 750,000 vehicles. More than 710,000 vehicles were produced here last year, more than half of Tesla's global production of nearly 1.37 million vehicles in 2022.
Efficient manufacturing at Giga Shanghai is attributed to factors such as optimized manufacturing processes, efficient layout, streamlined supply chain management, low-cost land acquisition, and highly skilled human resources. It is also home to China's independent innovation research center, which works to improve the efficiency of the factory and the quality of vehicles.
The production system includes four workshops for stamping, welding, painting, and general assembly, which have an efficient workspace design. All workshops are designed with full functionality in mind. Offices are located on the second floor of the general assembly shop, while canteens are located adjacent to each shop to maximize space utilization and improve the efficiency of day-to-day operations. Tesla is also implementing the Warehouse On Wheel logistics system, which uses mobile container warehouses. This results in significant storage space savings, according to 36Kr.
In addition, Tesla has introduced various technologies to improve production efficiency at Giga Shanghai. The company conducts quality control reviews in key areas such as wheels, lights, sliding ADAS calibration, wheel hubs, chassis, and rain testing before vehicles roll off the production line, which are similar to those conducted by other automakers. In addition to this, Tesla has implemented an audit process in which randomly selected vehicles are assessed internally by employees who simulate customers from a professional perspective.
At the moment, Phase 2 has a capacity of 13,000 vehicles per week. This means that a car rolls off the assembly line every 45 seconds. The efficiency of Giga Shanghai is so high that soon the factory will start exporting cars to Canada. This will be the first time vehicles from Tesla's Chinese factory will be exported to North America.
© 2023, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts; follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
