Today was one of the most interesting and fun days getting to see the LEGO factory. Witnessing the processing, development, and production of the toys from start to finish was a very unique experience and gave me a lot of insight I would have never known. It was surprising to me how complex yet organized the entire system was. Each building had a specialized purpose which made the system work quicker and more efficiently. For example a room for processing and stamping the legos, putting pieces together if needed, a packaging room, and a boxing room. It also surprised me how some parts of the process were more automated than others depending on the purpose. I assumed that most of it would be fully automated and would have zero or minimal error due to the precision of the robots. However, there were many parts that were semiautomatic or fully manual as she explained how human intervention in some cases is actually a better option as sometimes the robots cannot handle certain shapes and sizes so humans place the legos perfectly in the machine or do the entire process by hand to prevent errors. I think it is possible in the future that robots will be capable of doing the entire process but for now it is interesting to see the human roles in the production line. There was a room in the factory that was completely automated with zero humans which is an indicator of what the factory might look like in the future. Overall, it was one of the most interesting company visits we did and i’m very glad we got the opportunity to go.
Swanson School of Engineering 