NYC VC Frenzy: What Does It Have to Do with Production Lines?

Last month in Detroit, during the acceptance inspection of a welding line retrofit project, the client's plant manager pointed at the newly installed robots and said, "Your efficiency isn't as good as that AI welding company in Silicon Valley. They raised hundreds of millions and claim their visual algorithms save 20% of the takt time." I asked him, "Have those guys ever been to your production line? Do they know your fixtures are old models from 2008, requiring a 4-hour line stop every time you switch car models?" The plant manager didn't respond.