LordOfChaos
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PlayStation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory
Robots carry on legacy of craftsmanship at little-known Kisarazu plant
asia.nikkei.com
Just a few humans were present to deal with a handful of tasks -- two to feed bare motherboards to the line, and two to package the finished consoles.
But the actual assembly is done entirely by articulated robots, supplied by Mitsubishi Electric. The 31.4-meter line, completed in 2018, has the ability to churn out a new console every 30 seconds.
One of the plant's crowning achievements is the use of robots to attach wires, tape and other flexible parts to the consoles. Twenty-six out of 32 robots at the Kisarazu plant are dedicated to the task, deftly handling materials most robots would find too finicky.
For example, attaching the flexible flat cable -- a tape-like electrical cord -- requires one robot arm to hold up the cable and another to twist it. The cable then needs to be attached in a specific direction using just the right pressure, which may seem simple for a human but is an extremely complex maneuver for robot.
"There's probably no other site that can manipulate robots in this manner," said an engineer. Every process -- all the way to final packaging -- is automated. The blend of robotic and human labor is painstakingly optimized with a priority on return on investment.
But there is no guarantee of future success. Although the PS2 was a hit when it was released in 2000, when the PS3 came out in 2006, it gave up market share to the Microsoft Xbox. Unlike in the past, the next decade at Sony Group will depend on how well the PS5 is received when it is expected to hit shelves this holiday season.
Nikkei is well reputed and the world's largest financial newspaper, just found this interesting. It's interesting to me that many efforts like this tried and failed, famously Tesla among others tried to do nearly all automation but then found humans were just better at some things than current robots, but the PlayStation factory has whittled down all those tasks robots weren't previously good at, granted obviously a console is several orders of magnitude less of a production than a car. But production improvements keep the whole line profitable even as demand wanes late in a consoles life.
Hope this also means really consistent and tight build quality, PS4 wasn't exactly that at the start but the idea is also continuous process improvement.
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