In a memo to employees sent early Monday morning, Tesla CEO Elon Musk provided details on the plan to restructure their operation. “We are flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission.”  The management shakeup was likely prompted at least in part by the departure of several key executives in recent months.

During a conference call with business journalists last week, Musk also stated that streamlining its production process  —  with humans, not robots — will play a key role in cost-cutting: “we've also found that there are some things that are very well suited to manual operation and some things that are very well suited to automated operation, and the two should not be confused. So, I should be clear that the vast majority of the Tesla production system is automated. However, as I've mentioned in a tweet a few months ago, we did go too far on the automation front and automated some pretty silly things.”