The Leaning Factories 278
number of parts stored in the factory. But one day the
assembly line stopped. A container from China was stuck
in customs, so they didn’t get the supply of a $3 USB cable
needed for each car. It’s common to have a reserve plan
if something like this happens, and it consisted of flying
in the cables from China. But it failed because Tesla’s
credit limit was exceeded. To solve the problem, Tesla had
to send employees to stores around the factory to hunt
USB cables.^353 Another shipment of trunk carpets from a
supplier in Mexico was delayed because of a drug shootout
close to the border. Until the shipment arrived, Tesla had to
store unfinished Model S on the parking lot.^392 This is the
drawback when your factory is Lean. You may save money
if you minimize the inventory, but you may lose money
if you can’t fly in any parts because a volcano on Iceland
disrupts the air traffic. “It’s unbelievable how painful it is
when you are missing one thing and the whole machine
grinds to a halt,” JB Straubel said.^426
Another idea Tesla got from Toyota was to combine en-
gineering and production by having both types of engineers
close to each other. The Toyota Production System calls this
genchi genbutsu, which can be translated to “going to the
place to see the actual situation for understanding.”^2 “When
you try to make something there’s a big leap between
making that first prototype and actually making it, manu-
facturing it in large quantity with good quality,” Elon said.
“And for some reason people decide, ‘oh, they’re gonna
do the engineering here and do the manufacturing on the
other side of the world.’ And I think that actually ends up