Driving Empowerment with Data at Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors, the Palo Alto-based producer of electric vehicles, is always searching for ways to improve its production techniques. When its employees started using Tableau, not only did efficiency improve markedly but collaboration also skyrocketed across the company.

Tesla found that Tableau empowered its employees to explore their own data—and contribute their discoveries to conversations about production improvement. In this video interview, Will Bishop, Senior Test Engineer at Tesla, discusses the results.

Tesla Motors charged up collaboration with help from Tableau. The result? Improved production efficiency, among several other benefits.

"Tableau has shown us stuff that is totally surprising and has guided us in the right direction," says Bishop. When he makes visualizations in Tableau for other employees—or looks at what others have created—he sometimes sees answers to questions he never even thought to ask.

In the video, Bishop elaborates on the benefits of collaboration. "Having more eyes and more minds considering certain questions can push things forward in a kind of parallel effort."

Tableau also saves teams at Tesla significant amounts of time. And by being able to monitor production hour-by-hour—even minute-by-minute—Bishop's team can home in possible causes of any slow-downs.

Data exploration is now easier (and faster!) than ever at Tesla Motors. "The speed of making, publishing, and sharing data analyses with folks has just vastly accelerated," Bishop concludes.

Driving empowerment and charging up productivity with data? Yep, that sounds like what happens when you put Tesla and Tableau together. Hear more about it, in Bishop's words, here.

Photo credits: "Tesla Roadster Sport Insignia" by Norio Nakayama via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, and "Charging Tesla Model S 01" by Jeff Cooper via Flickr.