Today we went on our fifth and final company tour.  It was a tour of BMW’s factory in Munich. This trip was very interesting.  BMW’s main building stood high in the skyline and was very recognizable.  Their entire factory looked very nice and modern.  We went straight to BMW Welt.  This was a building set up specifically for people visiting.  It was basically a show room for all three of BMW’s brands: BMW, Rolls Royce and Mini.  In the show room, we saw models of each brand and we were even allowed to sit in some of them.  My favorite car that they had there was the new BMW I8.  After spending some time looking around, we were taken on a tour of the plant.  This was by far my favorite of the company visits.  On the tour, we could see all the pieces that the other companies had provided being put together to make a completed car.  We got to see almost every step in the process.  I was fascinated by how automated the process was, especially in the beginning.  All the metal framing for the car was welded together very quickly and efficiently by Kuka robots.  I also enjoyed seeing the painting process.  I never realized how complicated the process was to prepare a car to be painted.  It took many layers of liquid and a variety of chemical processes to ensure that the paint would stick and the metal underneath would be kept from rusting.  The tour ended with a long conveyor belt on which all of the remaining parts were put into place and then the completed cars were tested and could be shipped to their final destinations.

              After the tour, we spent some more time in the show room before heading over to the Olympic park.  We could take an elevator to the top of the tallest building in Munich.  The view from the top was cool because we could see the old part of the city that we had visited on Saturday, as well as the new parts and the Olympic park.  After this we headed back down to the bottom of the tower.  We ended our trip with a little bit of exercise by walking around the lake to the top of a hill where we could get yet another great view of the city.