Automation & assembly

Witnessing an interview with Rolex’s CEO isn’t an everyday event.

So when Jean-Frédéric Dufour appeared at Dubai Watch Week last November, the watch world sat down and took notice.

Revolution founder Wei Koh’s questioning was never going to be too punchy, but he did tease out some interesting facts on Rolex’s approach to new technology and its impact on modern watchmaking.

This started me wondering whether marketing venerable Swiss brands as custodians of centuries-old horological skills is becoming less important for a younger generation of consumers.

At the same exhibition, both Hublot and TAG Heuer had robots at the heart of their futuristic displays; a far cry from the wizened old watchmakers often seen demonstrating handcraft skills at a traditional oak workbench in trade shows of old.

Mr Dufour was refreshingly open about the importance of automation, artificial intelligence and technology in Rolex’s factories. “We already use AI in many areas,” he said. “We have a very modern machine tools inventory. The average age of our machines is around eight years, and we invest roughly CHF 100 million a year to refresh and upgrade these tools.”

He added: “This is not done because it’s fun. It’s because we always want to have the latest generation of machinery that can produce the best possible components in terms of precision and quality. AI helps program and maintain the machines. It enhances human capability,.”

Mr Koh, a passionate watch collector as well as a media personality, looked like he had lost his moorings. “I’ve never really thought about the best tools being essential to making the best watches,” he admitted as he tried to steer the conversation back to mechanical watches having heritage, a heartbeat, a soul. “Watchmakers are still super-important,” Mr Dufour conceded. “We cannot do everything with robots.”

It was like discovering the Wizard of Oz is just an illusionist. We all know that Rolex is an industrial giant making over one million precision watches per year, but it rarely penetrates our minds that this could only be achieved with a level of automation we normally associate with making consumer electronics or cars.

Christopher Ward has always taken a more open and honest approach to its messaging. From day one, it was transparent about how its watches are made, from where it sources its components and how this feeds into its mission to make the best quality watches possible, with the greatest value for money.

Paul Wright, merchandising & supply chain director for CW, will tell you proudly that its Biel assembly plant sources precision components from the same factories used by the likes of Breitling, Cartier and TAG Heuer or complete movements from Sellita. The company’s business model is to work with the finest suppliers in the appropriate price category, some Swiss, others not. People cannot be replaced in research and development, design and final assembly, but the choice between humans and machines is based on cost/benefit analysis.

“It’s not emotional, it’s maths,” Paul tells Loupe, and the equation is no different at Rolex. “Rolex strikes me as the pinnacle of automation – the Toyota Production System applied to watchmaking. You stand outside their buildings at night and all you see are machines humming away. No humans in sight, yet production continues,” he says.

“It’s not emotional, it’s maths”

All manufacturers of mechanical watches, large and small, face the same mathematical choices, but scale does matter. Independent watchmakers producing tens or low-hundreds of watches per year make a virtue of handmaking as much as they can. This also makes them nimble and able to inject new engineering ideas and art into their creations. But it also invites imperfections that technology can eradicate at scale. “A robotic polishing line only makes economic sense if you’re producing over 2,000 identical components per run. Below that, you’re better off with a skilled polisher at a wheel,” says Paul.

Creating anything new also requires much more human intervention. Developing the award-winning Bel Canto, for example, was incredibly labour-intensive and required the brightest minds to bring it to market. This is why its first run was a mere 300 pieces. But once mastered, Christopher Ward worked to make precision manufacturing as efficient, repeatable and reliable as possible.

“Only once the engineering was crystallised did we start industrialising – machining the gongs and hammers to consistent profiles, controlling hardness and polish, eliminating variability. At that point, the watch essentially shifted from a ‘hand-tuned’ product to a refined engineering process, and quality stabilised at scale,” says Paul. As a result, production has increased tenfold from 50 per month ahead of the Bel Canto’s launch, to 500 monthly today.

By Swiss standards, Hublot is another relatively young watchmaker. Founded in 1980, it is proud of its modern engineering approach and mastery of materials like gold and ceramic alloys. State-of-the-art design and manufacturing is central to its business model and its marketing, and artificial intelligence is opening up new frontiers.

“Personalised AI ensures that technological assistance amplifies rather than homogenises our creative output,” Hublot’s operations team says. “It recognises what makes a watch unmistakably Hublot – the fusion of tradition and innovation, the architectural boldness, the materials mastery – it helps our artisans and engineers capitalise on our savoir-faire to create watches that could only emerge from our manufacture.”

The human touch will always be essential to keep a historic industry like mechanical watchmaking alive. Apple and Samsung can make wristwear priced at £300 that is smart enough to launch a rocket to the moon, and can be produced in the millions. But producing beautiful timepieces; powered by a pulsating spring tightened by the twist of a crown or the swing of an arm; regulating that kinetic energy to control displays of hours, minutes, seconds, phases of the moon or the date for hundreds of years into the future still feels closer to alchemy than science.

Advanced engineering, automation, robotics and artificial intelligence have made mechanical watches more accurate and reliable without making them unattainable. Marrying the best of humanity and heritage with the latest technology is the most exciting movement in watchmaking today, and should secure its future for centuries to come.