Apple and manufacturing with Instrumental CEO Anna-Katrina Shedletsky

Manufacturing processes haven’t changed much in recent years, even with dramatic advances in technology. Consumer electronics are still almost 100% handmade, even at companies that supply the best of the best -– like Apple. On this episode of Apple Chat, I interview Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, former product design engineer for Apple, about the challenges of manufacturing electronic goods at massive scale. Shedletsky's new company, Instrumental, makes machine-learning software and associated hardware that monitors assembly lines and allows design engineers to troubleshoot manufacturing problems with agility. Shedletsky and I discuss the current state of assembly-line manufacturing around the world, and in particular, how a large-scale manufacturer like Foxconn operates. We talk about the unique challenges facing large-scale manufacturers, including how to ramp up production for the holiday season, and how to manage the sheer scale of building products like the iPhone. We also discuss in detail how manufacturers and design engineers work together on optimizing the yield that comes off a production line. We discuss how companies determine what goes onto the “bone pile” (units not fit for consumers) and how the threshold changes depending on the product. And we talk about where automation fits in the process, and her views on automation replacing humans on the assembly line. Finally, Shedletsky explains how Instrumental takes machine learning designed in the consumer space (for things like Netflix search recommendations) and applies it to the manufacturing industry.