Phoebe Katz, May 11
Today was a big day, as we had two company visits. We began with a very early morning wake-up and then drove to the Munich metropolitan area to visit Webasto, the company I will be presenting about. On the way there, I wrote a series of questions to ask. The lobby was beautiful, but we arrived a little early so we had to wait a little before a woman from HR walked us to another building for the presentation. The new building was a large gymnasium with lots of natural light, which was odd but also serene. After a brief coffee and pretzel snack, we learned about the company and their initiatives in the vehicle charging industry.
We got another coffee and pretzel break before heading back to the original building to wait for a tour of the roofing system testing facility. As we waited in the lobby again, we were given Webasto merch, including a notebook, pen, and ginger shot. It was pretty cool. Then, we learned about the multitude of tests run by the R&D team when designing new roofing systems. The roofs have to be temperature tested, sun tested, rain tested, hail tested, salt spray tested, vibration tested, sound tested, and force tested. I was surprised by the number of tests that had to be run but having seen them all, it makes so much sense. It really opened my eyes to the complexity of making cars and making anything, really. Before we left, we got a 2-in-1 Webasato ruler and whole puncher.
We ate a nice sandwich lunch before heading to the BMW headquarters, factory, and museum located in Munich. First, we were led on a tour of the factory. We were walking on catwalks above the main floor but it was still super cool. The level of automation is incredible and our tour guide had answers to all of our questions. I specifically enjoyed seeing the robots working together to move and connect parts. It was exceedingly well orchestrated. While watching them, I kept thinking about the many lines of code that would be required for the level of complex movement executed by those robots. It made me want to get much better at coding so that I could make something like that. It did, however, worry me because they were all bolted to the floor and I felt bad that they didn’t get to move around. Hopefully they will not stage a rebellion.
By the end of the tour, my feet were killing me but we continued on for another hour to walk through the attached museum. Many sections were very cool, especially the Isetta car and the motorcycles with sidecars. However, the nature of the tour meant a lot of starting and stopping, which my body could not handle at that point. I still got to look at all of the displays, though. Finally, we had a presentation on sustainability from an engineer turned tour guide. We heard about BMW’s efforts to adopt a circular economic model but also were told that they could not switch away from ICEs because of the size of the company. We are currently on our way back to Augsburg, where we will eat dinner independently and (hopefully) have a chance to stop at the convenience store before it closes.
Disclaimer: I did not take my featured photo for me. That was on the free photo website pexels. I did not take any photos on this day of the trip.