Tuesday, May 8

Today was a very long day! At around 8:15 we took the bus to visit SGL, a company that specializes in manufacturing carbon fiber for auto parts, making it a Tier 2 supplier to the auto industry.

We first listened to a company representative give a presentation about the science behind their carbon fibers as well as their business environment. After this, we split into two groups and each took a tour of the factory. Part of the production line that produces the fiber itself was unfortunately down, but that also meant that the noise level in the factory was low enough that we could hear our tour guide with no problems! One interesting thing that I noticed about their production line was that they used KUKA robots for certain steps (KUKA is a robotics company that I believe we will visit next week). As chemical engineering students, Josh and I would have been at home as a part of the SGL presentation group!

After the tours, the company provided a lunch for us: chili, salad, vegetables, and rolls. After eating and taking some group pictures, we got back on the bus and proceeded to the BMW Museum in Munich!

The main part of the museum had a lot of information about the history of the company and showcased past models and technological milestones of the company. As a BMW company group member, I took numerous pictures just in case anything would be useful for our final presentation. One area of the museum that I think will be prominent in the engineering section of the presentation was the i-Series exhibit.

This section of the museum was separated from the rest; we had to re-scan our tickets to get in. We first walked up a spiraling walkway which was lined with statistics about sustainability and some information about BMW’s efforts to reduce the impact of their industry on the environment. We finally arrived at the top floor, which was packed with exhibits and information about Project i, which is a program through which the company is developing more sustainable driving alternatives for city transportation. They are doing this through changing the energy sources they use for production, creating more sustainable ways of powering a car, and even changing the materials that future cars will be made of to increase efficiency. I won’t reveal too much in this post, however! Some of this information will be provided in our final presentation.

After finishing up with research, Grant, Josh, Eric and I went across to the BMW World to eat some sort of dinner at the café before our two-hour factory tour would begin at 6. I was slightly dreading walking around for that long in my dress shoes (not exactly designed for prolonged movement), but the experience more than made up for the pain.

We walked along the entire assembly line process, starting with the formation of sheet metal into doors, we watched the car bodies put together, spot welded, painted, and furnished until finally becoming finished products. What really amazed me was the dexterity and coordination of all the robots (again from KUKA!) that were all performing different tasks within such close proximity to one another. Seeing this helped me to gain new appreciation for my engineering friends who will be joining the Computer Engineering department; the programmers of these robots had a really complicated job!

Once back at the hotel, a few of us played cards in the lobby before turning in. It had been a very eventful day!

Step count: 15,864