Original subtitles

Narrator: A hot sauce making super scale history

On a salt dome in louisiana.

♪♪

Inside this online giant,

How amazon processes millions of orders at lightning speed.

♪♪

Kia, a south korean car manufacturer

Are breaking records in slovakia.

And in south korea,

The world's largest steel plant is melting iron ore

To keep the world supplied with this versatile alloy.

These groundbreaking innovations are all taking place

Inside some of the most incredible factories

On the planet.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

[ beeping ]

This is avery island,

137 miles west of new orleans,

The heart of bayou country.

This is the home of an iconic sauce brand

That's been heating up the world for 150 years --

Tabasco.

Today, the spicy red hot liquid is grown,

Processed, and sold on a super scale

From a self-sufficient farm on the island.

700,000 bottles a day are produced

By using a centuries old family recipe.

♪♪

Sixth generation family member john simmons manages the crops.

So we're here on avery island, on our farm,

Our process from seed to bottle takes about five years

And this is the beginning of it right here.

Every pepper that goes into the making of tabasco sauce

Comes from seed that are grown right here on avery island.

Narrator: The chilies grown here

Are specifically tabasco chilies,

A variety that originated far away from u.S. Soil.

The founder, edmund mcilhenny,

Got hold of pepper seeds from central america.

He sold them on avery island.

And as it turns out, the taste is just what he was looking for.

Narrator: Mcilhenny grew his first commercial pepper crop

In 1868.

The next year, he sent out 658 bottles

Of sauce at a dollar apiece.

Today, the seeds are chosen from a cultivated crop.

As near as we know, those seeds are identical

To the seeds that edmund mcilhenny,

My great-great-great grandfather with,

Started 150 years ago.

We do our seed here because we can make sure

That that seed is perfect, that it's exactly what we want.

We'll come out here and look at those plants

And we'll pick the best ones, the strongest ones.

And we'll say these plants here are the ones

That we want to make our seed crop with.

Narrator: Avery island doesn't have the space or staff to grow

And pick all the chilies

Needed to supply the global tabasco industry.

So the seeds are sent all around the world to grow.

But central america is where most of the chilies used today

Are cultivated.

Pickers ensure ripeness

By comparing the color of the peppers

To a small wooden dowel

Which is painted the preferred hue of tabasco red.

The color indicates whether or not it's the optimum time

To pick in order to ensure maximum heat.

Once picked, they're mashed up with salt.

After a month of fermenting,

The mash is then shipped back to avery island,

Where it's poured into these 80-year-old wooden barrels.

So we're in the mash warehouse sometimes we call it

The barrel warehouse,

And this is the building that really sets tabasco sauce apart

Because we take two of our three raw ingredients

And we age them in oak barrels

For up to three years to give tabasco sauce

That unique flavor and unique smell

That people all around the world know.

We have between 65,000 and 70,000 barrels.

In this building and here we have about 15

Or 20,000 barrels at any given time.

And then we have a building next door with all the rest.

That's a three-year supply of tabasco sauce

Right here on avery island.

Narrator: Over the years,

The mash and salt will break down.

Fermentation is an ancient method of food preservation,

And it's an amazing process.

It kills off bacteria, which is harmful to food,

Which would make food decay.

But the great news is it encourages bacteria,

Which makes food tastes delicious.

Edmund mcilhenny started with clay jars

And then he moved to using oak barrels

And he found that oak barrels imparted a flavor

And a color and a smell

That was really powerful and interesting.

Narrator: Before the mix can be left to ferment,

They have to complete a crucial part of the process,

Covering each barrel with a thick layer of salt,

Which is extracted from mines located beneath avery island.

The enemy of pepper mash is oxygen, oxygen and sunlight,

Those are the things we want to keep out.

So the best way we can keep oxygen out

Is to close up that container seal it as tight as possible

And put this block on top.

But we need a permeable thing

Because there's carbon dioxide being created inside that barrel

And we need a place for it to go.

So there's a one way valve that you can't see

Covered by this block of salt,

But that salt is permeable enough

To allow that carbon dioxide through it.

If we didn't have that, the pressure would build up

Inside that barrel and it would explode.

Salt has been used as a preservative

For thousands of years.

Now salt dries out food

And all living things require water to grow,

Including bacteria, harmful bacteria,

Which can create food poisoning.

So salting food not only makes it last a long time,

It makes it safe.

Narrator: The three-year fermentation process

Is the only change to the original recipe,

Which mandated fermenting for just 30 days.

Every morning, a team member checks the batch

That will become today's sauce.

Simmons: Here we have a barrel, three years old.

This is ready to be turned into tabasco sauce.

So you can see a few things.

We've got this really, really deep red color.

And the other thing you can see is how much evaporation

We've had inside the barrel.

The whiskey companies call that the angel share,

The evaporation of whiskey inside the barrel.

We call it the same thing, essentially.

It's the evaporation of tabasco pepper mash,

The moisture inside tabasco pepper mash inside that barrel.

♪♪

Narrator: The fermented mash

That is ready to be turned into sauce

Is pumped into big steel vats

Where it's drained of remaining moisture for eight hours,

Losing 25% of its weight.

Then it's pumped into 2,600 gallon wooden barrels

And churned with vinegar.

The acidity of the vinegar breaks down most of the pulp,

And the liquid is strained to remove skins and seeds.

♪♪

Tabasco sauce is graded for hotness.

Here they use the scoville scale.

It was invented by pharmacist wilbur scoville in 1912

And measures the level of capsaicinoids.

This is the component of chili peppers responsible

For most of the burn.

In our mouth, our receptors, which can detect heat,

Now, they can detect actual heat,

But they can also detect heat from food like chilies.

Capsaicin, which is the chemical compound found in foods

Like chilies and peppers, actually fools our bodies

Into thinking that we've eaten something hot,

Hot to touch that burns,

Even though is actually a food.

♪♪

Narrator: The flagship red variety of tabasco pepper sauce

Measures 2,500 to 5,000 scoville heat units.

Our hottest sauce right now is our scorpion sauce

That comes in and around

33 to 35,000 scoville heat units.

Just under that is our habanero sauce,

Which is about 9,000.

Narrator: Each sauce is tested by a panel of 20 employees.

We do some pretty rigorous sensory testing that way

And it has to get the thumbs up from everyone

Before we go ahead with it to market.

Narrator: Once it passes the test,

It's sent to be bottled.

And this is where modern production methods kick in.

♪♪

There are 720 drops in a single bottle of tabasco sauce

And 700,000 bottles of sauce

Are produced here in a single day.

The signature bottle derives from the original ones

Used in 1858,

Which were based on a perfume bottle produced in new orleans.

It takes five years

To produce a bottle of finished sauce.

It's a highly complex process with global ends,

Labels are printed in 22 different languages,

And exported to over 180 different countries.

As long as this super factory holds the secret to tabasco,

They'll be producing it for centuries to come.

♪♪

But while tabasco has spent 150 years

Perfecting one product,

This next company has spent the last two decades

Attempting to corner the market on every product imaginable.

By using the latest and greatest industrial technology available

And relying on a steadily growing workforce,

Amazon has revolutionized the online shopping industry.

♪♪

In northern England lies a facility

Whose interior doesn't look like a traditional factory,

But that's because the people and machinery here

Are working to transform modern production methods.

This is amazon, a company that's part of what experts call

The fourth industrial revolution.

Here, they use high levels of automation,

But that doesn't mean fewer people.

♪♪

Narrator: The amazon factory in northern England

Is a pioneer in the fourth industrial revolution,

Using technology to maximize productivity

And minimize mistakes.

But they haven't abandoned their human workforce.

In fact, they're relying on their workers more than ever.

They've invested heavily in robots

To improve the efficiency of their operation,

But their staffing has gone up.

The global workforce more than doubled between 2016 and 2019

To more than 650,000 people.

They're now the second biggest employer

In the whole of the usa.

Narrator: It all began when ceo jeff bezos

Started selling books in his garage in 1994.

With a net worth of $113 billion,

He has become the world's wealthiest man,

And amazon now controls 50% of online commerce

In the united states.

All over the world,

Amazon is building giant delivery facilities called

Fulfillment centers or fcs.

By 2019, 175 of amazon's fcs

Were in operation.

On the inside, it's a giant machine with one task --

To package parcels in record time.

When those robots are moving,

It's like a ballet or a waltz, they're definitely dancing.

♪♪

Narrator: One of amazon's most modern fcs

Is located in bolton, England,

Covering almost 366,000 square feet,

It's a state of the art facility designed to ship

Millions of packages every year.

Products arrive on a constant stream of trucks

Carrying any of the 370 million products

Currently listed on amazon in the u.K.

We have product coming over on truckload coming from sellers,

Vendors, and from our own warehouses.

It comes in where we upload this and stage it on our yard,

Ready to go into our warehouse for storage

Where it's gonna be ready to ship for our customers.

♪♪

Narrator: Inside black plastic tubs called totes,

Products begin their journey along a network

Of five miles of conveyor belts.

♪♪

The first destination is the storage area.

♪♪

Where traditional warehouses have static rows

Of shelving with staff walking back and forth,

Here, it's the shelves that do the walking.

The key to this entire operation is remote controlled robots.

The orange devices pick up the yellow shelf units

And drop them off at their next destination

Within the warehouse.

Narrator: There are thousands of shelf units

Supported by these robots.

Every item is placed by a picker on the shelves.

It's given a barcode so a robot can find it later.

But crucially, the shelves are deliberately stacked

In a completely random way.

This places items all around the factory.

So when robots or pickers need something,

They can get to a quicker.

But that's not all they do,

These robots do a neat little bit of machine learning,

Which is to realize if they happen to have on board an item

Which is currently trending and is somehow proving popular

Instead of returning back to the middle,

They actually hang around the outside

Expecting to be called upon again.

There's a direct link between the customer

As they shop online

And what's happening here on the floor.

Once they're full,

The shelf units disappear back into the storage area

Until someone maybe hundreds or even thousands of miles away,

Decides to purchase an item stored on that particular shelf.

♪♪

As soon as that happens,

A robot is directed to grab that individual shelf unit

Among thousands that contains the specific item.

♪♪

It's then hurried over to the picking area

Where the journey to the customer is about to begin.

♪♪

Once the robots arrive at the picking area,

Items are readied for customers who ordered for that day.

The tote heads off again,

This time for the packing department.

♪♪

But with hundreds of thousands of items passing back and forth,

What happens if one goes missing?

♪♪

An alert's gone out saying there's something on the floor

Which shouldn't be there.

Adam cunliffe is a specially trained troubleshooter

Who is one of very few people

Authorized to enter the cage where the robots are.

Adam's jacket is emitting a radio pulse,

Which tells the robots to avoid him.

This crucial safety measure,

Protects the automated units, the merchandise,

And most importantly, the workforce.

♪♪

With time of the essence,

Adam must find the lost item as soon as possible.

♪♪

Now that the item is found,

He just needs to retrace his steps and exit the cage.

♪♪

♪♪

With that mini crisis averted,

The latest batch of items to be selected

Has reached the packing department.

Preparing them for dispatch is a complex process.

But it's designed this way

To preserve a customer's anonymity.

Here, the item is boxed up

And the first of two labels is attached.

But this first label carries only

An impenetrable digital code.

This means that the person doing the packing has no idea

Who placed the order or where the package is heading.

It protects the customer's privacy,

Including the people who actually work for amazon.

I often get packages from my own warehouse.

I'm not sure that I would want anyone

Knowing what I'm ordering.

And the same would go for every person who's working here.

♪♪

Narrator: The anonymous package then heads to the machine,

Which will finally print and apply the label

Carrying the customer's name and address.

♪♪

That label is printed in under two seconds

From the moment the package is rescanned

To when a robot arm descends and applies the label.

♪♪

The speed of labeling is incredible,

But it also obscures

One of the most important details of the process.

Amazon has developed a critical method

To protect their more delicate inventory

Without sacrificing efficiency.

♪♪

Narrator: Amazon undeniably dominates

The online shopping market

With such a high volume of products

Passing through their massive fulfillment centers.

The company needed a strategy to quickly apply shipping labels

Without damaging fragile merchandise.

The items are now ready to go to their final destination.

The last conveyor directs them towards a row of more

Than 100 separate bins.

Each one represents a different city

Or geographical region.

Now, all the packages are ready to be loaded onto a truck

For delivery.

♪♪

Across the u.K.,

Fulfillment centers like this one dispatch packages

To tens of millions of customers across europe.

♪♪

And with drone delivery in development,

Amazon continues to secure its place at the forefront

Of the new industrial revolution,

The world of robotics and artificial intelligence

Are undoubtedly merging.

No more will a robot just be a thing programmed

To perform a specific task,

But actually, it will become something which learns

From the task it performs, observes the world around it,

And changes its behavior accordingly.

Narrator: Amazon has forever changed

What it means to go shopping.

The revolution ushered in by super facilities like this one

Shows no sign of slowing down.

♪♪

Much like amazon's fcs,

This slovakian car factory requires that robots and humans

Work in tandem to maximize productivity.

♪♪

[ beeping ]

♪♪

Wedged in between three mountain ranges

And slovakia is jelena,

A picturesque town with a proud industrial history.

♪♪

Now it's home to a 40.3 acre super factory

That can make up to 63 cars an hour

And produce eight models on the same production line.

This is the european hub for south korean car giant kia.

♪♪

Established in 2004,

This plant can build 350,000 cars a year.

Rows of robots work in tandem with 3,800 workers

To produce the ceed, venga, and sportage models,

Which are exported to 95 countries worldwide.

Once the underdog of the car industry,

Once they teamed up with hyundai,

They became the fourth biggest car manufacturer in the world

After volkswagen, toyota, and general motors.

Narrator: It all starts here with 18-ton giant rolls of steel

And two 5,952-ton presses.

The outer skin panels are different shapes,

Punched out of sheet steel called blanks.

The blanking line produces 53 of them a minute,

With so many cars being made a year,

The choice of metal is key.

Right now, steel is plentiful and cheap,

Which makes it the ideal choice for car bodies

Produced by the millions.

Aluminum is lighter

And has a similar strength to weight ratio,

But it's significantly more expensive.

In fact, four times more expensive.

Narrator: The steel blanks are then sent to the stamping line

To become panels.

Here, they use a method called cold stamping.

The metal sheets are turned into the desired form

Using intense pressure rather than heat.

The robotic presses stamp

1,500 panels each shift.

♪♪

Doors, roofs, hoods, and bumpers are all stamped here

With robots moving and transporting the parts.

The factory operates around the clock

And is able to make 1,450 cars a day.

♪♪

The panels are cut, but even robots can make mistakes,

So the human eye is brought in to double check the panels.

♪♪

Any surface defects will create a problem

When the car is painted.

So being thorough is key.

Once the check is complete, an electric monorail

Takes the panels to a vast two-story hangar area.

♪♪

This automated warehouse

Has a capacity of 6,850 pieces.

The parts are retrieved on demand.

It's called the just-in-time philosophy that was developed

By car manufacturers in japan in the 1970s.

Just in time is about receiving goods in within minutes

Of requiring it, assembling the products,

And moving us out very quickly, too.

This eliminates stock,

It saves money, reduces waste,

And it really drives efficiency within the plant.

Narrator: But the robots in this super factory aren't limited

To cutting and distributing parts.

Kia has also incorporated them

Into the assembly process itself,

♪♪

Narrator: Once the newly minted steel panels are quality checked

By a human eye, kia's robots step in again.

♪♪

They select and transport panels to the welding shop.

Here, welders will make the mainframe.

Over the past 30 to 40 years,

Car welding robots have transformed

The automotive industry.

They are very, very good at doing multiple

And repeatable tasks.

Robots can also work efficiently in hazardous conditions

In environments such as an automotive paint shop

Where chemicals, structures, and heat

Would be either intolerable

Or potentially dangerous to humans.

Narrator: There are more than 3,000 welding points

On the body,

374 robots work in synchronicity

At 40 stations.

The robots weld using diode disc lasers,

Which are small, light energy efficient systems

Compared to conventional welders.

♪♪

The robots can reach hard to access spaces quickly

And weld with pinpoint accuracy.

♪♪

The mainframe is almost complete and the humans

Are again required to do visual checking.

One car is checked every minute.

From the body shop,

The car frames are moved into the paint shop

Via a conveyor system

With a total length of 4.8 miles.

The paint shop is a highly specialized dip tank,

Rotating the car 360 degrees.

Bodies are rotated through a forward somersault

While immersed in the tank.

This ensures the crucial rust preventative primer paint

Gets into all the small crevices of the car.

An army of more than 80 painting robots moves in,

Spraying with speed and accuracy.

♪♪

Now it's time to assemble the car's internal components.

This area is much less automated.

More than 1,400 employees work in the assembly shop.

In this super factory,

The hall is nearly 1,640 feet long,

Totaling nearly 1.1 million square feet.

♪♪

First, the doors are removed for easier access.

♪♪

Then the assembly starts,

Wiring, pedals, and interior trim,

Ending with the cockpit.

This is another step requiring robotic precision.

They've been programmed to fit this part

With pinpoint accuracy.

♪♪

Next is the crucial marriage between engine and drive train.

♪♪

It's too intricate for robots to handle.

So the assembly team oversees this important step.

This assembly line has the ability

To produce multiple car designs on the same line,

Eight different models,

Including the sportage and four styles of c can be built.

Computers are programmed with multiple different models.

So it's possible to change equipment configurations

By selecting different settings

On the computer controlled machines.

The assembly line reaches its final stages

With four final lines of interior

And exterior fittings, bumpers, and doors,

A robot moves in with the windshield.

It receives data telling it which car it's working on

And makes the adjustment for this model.

♪♪

The car is now assembled.

[ horn honks ]

♪♪

Now it's time for testing,

Using a mix of machines and extensive driving.

♪♪

The whole process has taken just 14 hours.

♪♪

This plant has helped establish kia

Has the fourth largest car maker in the world.

In the future,

This slovakian super factory should be

At the forefront of motor manufacturing for years to come.

♪♪

Coming up, there's one product

Which the modern world simply can't live without.

Whether you're building a laptop, a skyscraper,

Or anything in between,

You're going to need this versatile alloy.

♪♪

Narrator: In gwangyang, on the coast of south korea

Lies the biggest steel plant in the world.

Here, workers go above and beyond to meet

The insatiable demand for steel.

It's the world's biggest steel plant.

This plant turns out roughly 21 million tons

Of steel every year.

That is enough to make around 12 million cars annually.

Steel is one of those materials

That really defines our modern age.

There was a moment before steel, after steel,

And the industrial revolution is on that line.

When we started to make a material that enabled us

To make things that changed the world.

Narrator: The biggest advance in steel production in recent years

Has been the degree of automation,

The pohang iron and steel company, or posco,

Is one of the most highly automated plants of all.

All around the world,

While the production of steel has increased significantly,

The number of steel workers has fallen drastically

By about 1.5 million people over 25 years.

♪♪

Narrator: Even with the decrease in workforce,

The factory still requires a vast site,

Including 50 smaller sub factories,

Each with a specific role in the production process.

In order to make steel, you need two raw ingredients --

Iron ore and coal.

It all starts underground in australia,

Where iron ore is blasted out of the ground

From mineral rich land.

Once blasted,

It arrives by ship to this steel plant's port,

So to take iron and turn it into steel,

You need to add carbon.

And what happens is the carbon atoms are actually

Getting inside the crystal lattice work of the iron

And plumping out these crystals and turning them from just iron

Into an alloy of iron and carbon, which we call steel.

♪♪

Narrator: The iron ore at this early stage

Resembles a kind of gray dust,

Extracting the usable metal from this

Is a multi-step process.

The technical term for the first process is called sintering.

♪♪

The iron ore is roasted,

Removing excess sulfur and other impurities,

Causing what was once dust to bind together

Into pea-sized nodules.

After sintering,

The ore looks almost like a sea of baked mud.

♪♪

Next, the ore is mixed with purified coal

Inside one of posco's five giant blast furnaces.

♪♪

Blast furnace number one,

Measuring in a 361 feet tall

And 66 feet across

Is the pride and joy of gwangyang steel makers.

♪♪

To make steel, carbon is needed,

The primary source of carbon is coal, which is coked.

Coke is a modified form of coal.

Essentially coking is taking coal

And heating it around a 1,000 degrees celsius

And then holding it there for a good 24 hours,

Even longer period of time.

And what's happening is you're essentially purifying the coal,

You're burning off impurities

And you're reducing it down to pure carbon.

So lumps of coke are pure nuggets of carbon.

♪♪

Narrator: This high grade coke will both fuel the fire

Inside the blast furnace and make steel.

But how does purified coal and purified iron come together

To make one of the world's most durable alloys?

The posco team relies on a complex chemical reaction

And a lot of heat to keep this super factory

Churning out quality steel.

♪♪

Narrator: In south korea, but super factory posco

Is one of the world's most important steel suppliers.

After iron ore and coal have been purified using heat,

The refined iron and carbon

Are combined in an enormous blast furnace

To burn off remaining oxygen and produce molten metal.

♪♪

Layers of ore and coke are poured into the furnace

To ensure a good distribution of both.

From below, hot air

At 2,732 fahrenheit

Is injected through nozzles.

Laughlin: You have to smelt it.

You have to extract the oxygen out from the iron.

And you do that by burning it with coke

And you rip the oxygen away, bonds with carbon,

Goes up into the atmosphere.

You're then left with the iron.

Narrator: At the base of the blast furnace,

This iron then turns into molten metal

Due to extremely high temperature.

But it can't yet be called steam.

The liquid iron is then

Poured into a torpedo shaped transporter,

Which will then take the molten metal to a second furnace,

Also known as a converter.

It's there that the process of converting iron to steel

Will actually take place.

Once there, the liquid iron is poured in.

Scrap, steel, and oxygen are then added to the mix.

♪♪

This process makes the impurities float

To the top where they're remove,

Leaving us with the final product -- steel.

It's essential that the temperature

During conversion is precisely regulated

Or the steel will lose its strength

And durability.

At gwangyang,

The computerized control room keeps the huge fire

In check with high tech heat monitoring.

Once purified, the molten steel is then poured into molds,

Which are then cooled into a solid semi-finished state

Called a slab.

♪♪

The slab can now be made into finished steel products

By a process called hot rolling.

♪♪

With thousands of tons of pressure,

These rollers squeeze the red hot steel like a rolling pin,

Pressing on a soft pastry,

Turning it into sheet steel.

♪♪

Now it's ready to be used in industries

Such as car making, shipbuilding, or construction.

♪♪

The steel being produced here is rolled steel,

But it can be produced to different strengths.

So, for example, like food can

And it's relatively strong and lightweight,

But actually you could still crush them with your bare hand

Once the lid's off.

And you compare that to an object like scissors

That are made out of a high carbon steel

That actually is really hard

And will hold an edge and will make a great blade from.

It's the same material family,

But it's actually very different stuff.

Narrator: The gwangyang plant is one of those facilities

Which operates largely in the background,

But without it,

The world would be a very different place.

Every 24 hours,

Posco produces enough steel to make 80,000 brand-new cars,

Making this giant steel plant

An undisputed global super factory.

♪♪