Television: Reality is Still In.... the shows keep getting better too!

I haven't posted in a long time, so I thought it was time to come back and share some "newer" (to me that is) shows that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Most of my old favorites are still around, so I won't bother relisting there here.

The great thing for people in search of knowledge/content is that as time goes on, Youtube continues improving with an ever growing user base.... I'm not sure the networks are benefiting much, but that's a separate issue...

General
Ultimate Factories - A show truly dedicated to the documentation of world's Ultimate Factories! If I could choose but one show to watch this would be the one. - National Geographic
How Do They Do It? - A Broad Range of Topics (This is a British show, but they have a surprising amount of US content.) - Discovery Channel
Man Made - Covers everything from factories to Construction - National Geographic
Factory Made - A Broad Range of Topics - Discovery Channel
Some Assembly Required - Plant Tours - Discovery Channel
How'd That Get On My Plate? - This show is more friendly for average viewers who may not normally watch a factory specific show. - Food Network
CEO - A monthly show that focuses on an interview with a current CEO. It looks similar in style to History's Business (I haven't actually watched the show yet, but it looks interesting) - PBS


Military
GI Factory - Military specific Factory Tours; There aren't many episodes, but the ones that were made are very comprehensive. - Military Channel
Weaponology - This show covers the history of many different military organizations, and educates about a broad range of weapons, strategies, cultures. - Military Channel

Car & Driver: VW's Transparent Factory Tour

The Transparent Factory is so impressive I decided it was worth posting two tours because they contain differing information. This Car & Driver tour includes much more information about the facility including a Q&A with Volkswagen that is very insightful into their thoughts about the VW Phaeton. Enjoy!

Car & Driver: Aston Martin Gaydon Plant Tour

Aston Martin...... The brand often evokes thoughts of racing or, due to clever marketing, a connection to Bond.... James Bond. Whatever you think about the brand, you have to admit the cars are very stylish and nice all around (and they had better be with MSRPs from $113K-$255K!).

This Car & Driver Plant Tour shows you around the Aston Martin Plant at Gaydon, Warwickshire, England. There are 45 pictures with captions, so there is quite a bit to see regarding how Aston Martin's are manufactured. As always, there isn't too much direct information about the company's operations, but a good deal can be inferred about company methodologies by the facilities, personnel, and equipment. I couldn't find exact annual figures for Aston Martin production, but the volume is relatively low (somewhere between 1,000-2,000 vehicles per year). This is reinforced by the low automation in the factory, which also fits the "handmade, high quality" persona associated with the brand.

Once you know, You Newegg! (Warehousing)

Being a computer hardware enthusiast I have been a longtime supporter of Newegg for their great selection and fantastic service levels for all things technology. Additionally, you don't see too many companies opening their doors for warehouse tours, and from both my experience as a customer and the Newegg Warehouse Tour reported by Anandtech the organization looks as solid as my service has been consistent.

Newegg is focused on high customer service levels, and it can be seen by their quick warehouse picking, operational flexibility, and many shipping methods. I truly appreciate the newegg option to make the order a Rush order by paying a few additional dollars .... Many retailers only give buyers the option to shorten their order leadtime by changing shipping methods, which gets expensive very quickly when you go from ground shipping to airfreight (usually at least 2x the cost).

The other problematic issue with shipping being the only user controlled variable is that I have purchased items (from other vendors) in the past that I upgraded to Fedex 2day shipping only to have the order take so long to pick that the order pushed out beyond the weekend anyway! I really wanted my order before the weekend for a computer build, so if I had known that the order would take forever to pick, stage, and package then I would have just saved the money and waited the additional week. Therefore, I find the Rush order option to be perfect for many people who need additional expediting control; it also allows Newegg to offer a service level somewhere between the cost of ground and 2nd day Air. This pricing point is a price many people are more than willing to pay, and Newegg earns the additional money rather than passing it on to the shippers!

Newegg's operations look very consistent with other warehouses I have visited (random item locations powered by a picking system, pick to light (PTL) conveyors with totes, manual and automatic boxing, etc.), but if you spent time really looking at the detailed processes I bet you might find a few innovative things that give Newegg a competitive advantage. The reason I believe this to be the case is that Newegg runs a very powerful, organized website and many of their products are high value, yet are also low weight. Newegg runs warehouses in CA and TN, so that gives them good access to both the east coast and west coast markets with adequate service to the middle of the country. The article mentions Newegg's target delivery goal twice, and I think it is an admirable one.
"Newegg's goal is to be able to have your shipment to you within 2 days of ordering it regardless of shipping method. It's not a guarantee, but rather an internal goal that they've been striving for ever since their inception. "

"We put great effort into building a bulletproof infrastructure because we are committed to ensuring our customers have the best service. Sure, you can find smaller companies that may be a dollar or so cheaper, but at Newegg we decided we wanted to give our customer the best experience every time, and that is why we must invest into advanced systems that other companies do not have. We built all this with the customer specifically in mind."

-Howard Tong, former Newegg VP

Television: Reality is In....

With all of the everyday-life television programming out there and many networks becoming niche markets for things (Food, News, Sports, Education [TLC, Discovery, History Channel, etc.]) it should come as no surprise that there is even a market for plant tours and manufacturing, especially when it allows manufacturers to enhance their presence in the marketplace and show off their latest and greatest products. Not all of the shows are of the same caliber, but there are several TV shows that I have found to be both entertaining and educational (my wife even likes a few!).

I record several shows because you never know what tidbit you will learn (even if the plant tour/subject has already been covered). And since it is recorded I can always fast forward or stop watching if the content isn't up to par. So, here is a list that may be worth investigating further if you are looking for more media to view. Many shows will provide company/product history in addition to showing you how things are made.

If you search YouTube and elsewhere some of the shows are even available.

How Its Made - Paintballs

General
How Its Made (US, Canada I actually prefer the Canadian version...) - Plant Tours for many products - Discovery & Science Channel
Modern Marvels - A Broad Range of Topics - History Channel
Unwrapped - Food Product Plant Tours - Food Network
History's Business - Interviews with company CEOs - History Channel
Made in America - American Plant Tours - Travel Channel

Automotive
Fifth Gear - Automotive reviews and information - Formerly on Speed; This is a British show
Top Gear - Automotive reviews and information - Formerly on Discovery; This is a British show

Military
Mail Call - Military history with some discussion of development/manufacturing - History Channel
Modern Marvels - A Broad Range of Topics - History Channel
Shooting USA - Coverage of the shooting sports with Plant Tours and other good technical information - Outdoor Channel
Shooting Gallery - Information about the firearms industry, related products and services. There have been several good Plant Tours on this show as well.
Sighting In with Shooting USA - I think this one got cancelled, but it was also good. - Outdoor Channel


Websites
How Stuff Works
How Products are Made

Canon Lens Plant Tour

I don't know as much about it, but optics are also an area I find very interesting. I took Engineering Physics in college and have since forgotten much of it, but I have a great appreciation for the engineering that goes into anything dealing with light and also sound. While looking for lens information I found someone who stated that he "believes Canon is the only camera company that manufactures all their own lens elements from raw materials (at their Utsunomiya plant). Leica makes lenses too, but they also OEM out some of their lenses entirely."

This Canon plant tour shows all of the steps to create a camera lens from start to finish, and the featured product the EF 500mm F4L IS USM is a gigantic lens at 19.7 inches in length! Also be sure to check out the Lens Gallery at the bottom which has more information about lens materials and physics.

Flashback: 1954 Smith & Wesson Plant Tour

Raw Steel to Smith & Wesson - The Story of Revolver Making

Thanks to a forum member over at the Smith & Wesson Forums, here is a vintage plant tour of the Smith & Wesson plant circa 1954. The manufacturing operation is nearly entirely vertically integrated as can be seen by the raw steel and raw walnut blank inventory for grips; in fact the only "outsourced components" I can think of at the moment may be the wax paper and paper shipping box! The article claims there are over 2000 operations and 500 inspections, and I believe the claim since virtually everything for the revolver was made onsite. Additionally, since this tour is so old every operation was pretty much a manual job. The craftsmanship of the operators was essential to making a quality product, and the hand fitting required made the task closer to an art rather than just assembly.


Some of the interesting highlights of the tour are as follows:
Image 5: The in-house Screw machine department
Image 29: Father and son Blaisdell team; You sure don't see anything even close to this anymore!
*Father's age: 75 with 52 years of S&W service
*Son's age: 41 with 16 years of S&W service
Images 36 & 42: Hand serialized parts (and assembly numbers for internal tracking)
Images 49 & 50: S&W makes its own tools/jigs/fixtures/gauges
Image 59: Manual recording of revolver shipments. To this day you can still request a factory letter for $30 from S&W Historian Roy Jinks that will tell you your revolver's original configuration, date of shipment, and where the gun was shipped to.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Flashback tour, and I hope you do as well. Things have changed considerably over the last 53 years, and it is always interesting to look back to see how a pre-computer, pre-CNC maching, etc. factory operated.

If you have any magazines, links, etc. to other old plant tours I would love to share the information with everyone! Now, on to the S&W tour....

Bentley Motor Cars Crewe Plant Tour

So to change things up here's some more Automotive goodness from Car & Driver magazine. An interesting tidbit is that since 1998 Bentley has been owned by the Volkswagen Group. I don't think I would personally spend 6 figures ($170K-$320K) for a new Flying B, but this tour will give you an idea of what you are getting for your hard earned cash. The production volumes are low for a production car, and the lack of automation (read: hand made car) suits the quality/customization/craftsmanship criteria toward which the vehicle is targeted. Enjoy!

Kingmax Plant Tour

Today's Plant Tour is the of the Kingmax Memory packaging and memory module factory in Hsin Chu, Taiwan. Kingmax performs their own chip packaging, which you do not see quite as often, and also assembles finished memory modules. As far as I could ascertain, Micron used to be a large supplier of Kingmax's chips, but now it could be any of the memory manufacturers; Micron, Promos, Samsung, etc.

Gigabyte Plant Tour

Today's Plant tour is of the Gigabyte Nan-Ping Factory in Taiwan. To provide some background, GIGABYTE, which was founded in 1986, has become one of the world's largest motherboard manufacturers. In addition to motherboards, GIGABYTE has further expanded its product portfolio to include graphics cards, notebook and desktop PCs, digital home entertainment appliances, networking servers, and other electronic products.

Gigabyte allowed several sites to provide plant tour coverage, so there is both a short, 2 minute video made by Firing Squad (2006), and detailed virtual tour with commentary from PCStats (2005). The factory assembles both motherboards and graphics cards, and is a great primer for those who have never looked at the detailed steps involved in making today's latest electronics. Many people do not realize that the whole process of manufacturing PCBs and similiar devices is very manual labor intesive, and therefore is almost always performed offshore from the US.

"Without a doubt, motherboards are the most complex and essential part of the
modern PC. Not only do they hold the chipsets that pass data from peripherals,
drives and memory to the processor, they also provide slots and ports for all
your other system components and the circuits through which all data must pass.
Perhaps surprisingly then, motherboards get very little respect in the computing
press as compared to other components. They are perpetually the team player and
not the star of the show, and are generally priced as such.

With this in mind, it's surprising to learn the amount of work and machinery involved in manufacturing a single motherboard. We'd vaguely imagined some sort of stamping process where all components are slapped onto the bare board in one step and soldered, before being boxed in a big room full of bored workers. Sure there'd
have to be some testing, but how intense could it be?"

Volkswagen: The Transparent Factory (Dresden, Germany)

To lead off the Plant Tours I'll start with the tour that most exceeded my expectations. Volkswagen's Transparent Factory (GLÄSERNE MANUFAKTUR auf Deutsch), as highlighted in a Plant Tour on the VWvortex forums, is a phenomenal manufacturing facility. In my opinion it is one of the most impressive factories I have seen to date. The Transparent Factory opened in 2002, and both the German and English names are a word play on the double meaning of transparent, referring to both optical transparency and transparency of the production process.


The Transparent Factory builds VW's top of the line Phaeton, and Bentleys can also be built on the same assembly line since the Phaeton's D1 platform is shared with the Bentley Continental GT and Bentley Continental Flying Spur. Ergonomics and a great deal of industrial engineering are obvious in the layout and manufacturing design. The assembly line is quite different from any automotive final assembly plant that I have seen before, and the whole facility has an experimental design feel to it. The cleanliness of the facility lends a sterile, hospital like feel to the whole site, and the white coveralls of the assembelers almost seem inappropriate (as if they should be wearing a white lab coat instead)!

The assembly operation and component factories, in places such as nearby Zwickau, appear quite integrated, and one can definitely tell that little expense was spared to establish the Transparent Factory as the flagship manufacturing operation in VW's worldwide operations. I am still very surprised that VW has not advertised their Phaeton manufacturing process more to the public. Phaetons are very nice cars, and showing the public how their car is built would make many people rethink the general assumption that VWs are a lower tier product versus Audi, BMW, and Mercedes Benz.