Day 4:

The day started early, getting up at 6:45 so that Nick (my roommate) and I could talk to the hotel receptionist about some Wi-Fi issues we were having in the room, being that there was no Wi-Fi. After giving them our room number and a quick breakfast, the group reconvened for the long trip to Regensburg, where we would visit the city itself as well as Continental. We boarded the bus for the two-hour trip to. I brought my neck pillow with the intention of sleeping for most of the trip and successfully slept on and off for the duration.

Upon arriving in Regensburg, we parked the Mercedes bus and walked across the Stone Bridge, the Danube, the most influential river in Europe, running alongside cities like Vienna, Budapest, Ingolstadt, and many more. The Stone Bridge is one of the most famous landmarks in Regensburg and was built in the 1100s. We actually made it to the town square, where we met a tour guide that took us along on an hour-long tour of Regensburg. We saw many things, some of the most notable being towers scattered throughout the city. These towers also dated back to the 12th century, when how powerful or well-known you were was determined by how tall your tower was.

Additionally, on the tour, we visited St. Peter’s Cathedral, which was amazing. It was ginormous and had lots of giant stained-glass windows scattered throughout. It also has the largest hanging organ in the world. The organ is a huge yet very organized mess of pipes hanging from the ceiling by only 4 ropes. They can do this because one of the towers was built directly alongside the Cathedral, and that tower provides enough extra support to hold up the organ. We visited again later when we had some free time before dinner, and we were able to listen to a choir’s voices echo through the interior. That would have been nice to listen to anywhere but listening to them sing in the Cathedral was awe-inspiring.

Following the tour, we made our way back to the bus, where we made a quick trip from the city to Continental. My first perspective of Continental was that it was much bigger than I thought it was, taking up a huge amount of area and even containing a test track (which unfortunately we could not see). When we arrived, we were ushered to a conference room complete with goodie bags and catered drinks. We received a presentation from a representative of the company named Mark and learned that Continental employees more than 240,000 people in 544 locations and 60 countries around the world.

Immediately after the initial presentation, we went to lunch. We ate at a cafeteria that bared an impressive resemblance to the Mensa cafeteria at the University of Augsburg. It even had the same exact conveyor belts, although it did not use an elevator as it did not need to traverse any the cafeteria like the one at the University of Augsburg.

Once we were finished with lunch, we went back to the conference room for a lecture from Dr. Thomas Gallner, the Head of Corporate Innovation Management at Continental. There, we learned about ACES, which stands for autonomous, connected, electric, and shared, corresponding to the order in which BMW believes the car must progress in the future. Daimler (who owns Mercedes), believes it should be CASE. We also learned about the VUCA model, which describes the progression from a problem to a solution. VUCA represents volatility becoming vision, uncertainty becoming understanding, complexity becoming clarity, and ambiguity becoming agility. Dr. Gallner also touched a lot of other aspects of the future of the automotive industry, such as the need to embrace multi-modal travel going forward to mitigate congestion problems in the highway system, as well as the car eventually becoming a true third room (the first being the home, and the second being the workplace).

After Dr. Gallner’s presentation, we went to get ready for the factory tour. At this plant, there were no tires being produced, and it was only electronic parts for various applications on the vehicle. What I didn’t realize before visiting today was that tires are a fraction of what Continental produces and that they are not only involved in countless other components of vehicles but also have dedicated maritime and mining branches.

Because of the sensitive nature of the electronics, we needed to remove all jackets, cell phones, wallets, and keys, and wear a special lab coat and shoe coverings to prevent the buildup of static electricity on ourselves. Upon entering the factory, I was just amazed. I found all the processes being undertaken there to be extremely interesting and incredibly cool. There was one completely automated assembly line that soldered and tested these very intricate circuit boards that we were able to see firsthand.

Something else that was neat was their resupply process. In their assembly line, they had rolls of the components that were being soldered on to the circuit boards. Once these rolls were running low, a notification would be sent out that would let a mobile robot know that they needed to pick up a certain role of a certain component and that it needed to be delivered to a specific location on the floor. From there, a worker would load up a bin with the part and put the bin on a robot, and the robot would navigate to the necessary location using a local GPS signal, and then return back to get additional supplies, and recharge itself if needed (a lot like the newer Roombas).

Another thing that I was very impressed with was Continental’s dedication to continuous improvement. There was a certain point in the tour where we saw a robot that was taking pieces off an assembly line and placing them in a bin. Once the bin was full, a worker would come and replace it with an empty one. It was against policy to be within a certain distance from the robot when it was in operation, so there needed to be something that would stop the system once someone needed to pick up a bin. Instead of using a door to separate the robot and the workers, and having the system stop once the door was opened, they instead used a light barrier. A light barrier is a system of lasers constantly monitoring to see if something has breached the barrier. In this case, the barrier is surrounding the housing of the robot, and once the barrier is breached by someone trying to pick up the bin, the system is stopped. This is a much more expensive solution than a door but is done because of the time and effort saved by the worker when they need to open and close the doors, showing their dedication to Kaizen methodologies.

After the tour, we took off the lab coats and shoe covers, said our goodbyes, and hopped on the bus which took us back to the town city. There, we walked back across the stone bridge and through the city to the restaurant that we would be eating at tonight, Weltenburger. From there, we had an hour to disperse and wander about Regensburg. We decided to take a look inside some of the shops there, and I ended up buying a small model of a new Audi A6 Avant.

Once we arrived at the Weltenburger, I ordered schnitzel, which is a traditional German food consisting of fried and had an outer breading casing it, and it was amazing. There was so much food that I couldn’t even finish it all. We were there for about an hour and a half, after which we walked back across the bridge and hopped on the bus for the ride back to the hotel, getting ready for an early day tomorrow in Ingolstadt to visit Audi.

Car of the day: Porsche 911 993 (circa. 1994)

The 993 version of the Porsche 911 was produced from 1994-1998, and is personally my favorite 911 model. I think it is a perfect mix between the older models and the newer ones, with a simple but modern interior. These 911’s produced about 270 horsepower from a flat-six and ran from 0-60 mph in just over 5 seconds.

Runner Up: Audi RS5 (2012-2015)

The second-generation Audi RS5 was replaced very recently by the newer RS5 that is now available in the United States. This car that is pictured is powered by a naturally aspirated V8 that produces 450 horsepower and takes the car from 0-60 mph in 4.0 seconds.