Our fourth day in Germany was another company visit, this time to Continental. I had only known Continental as a tire brand, but interestingly enough, this site did not produce tires at all. The first thing we did upon arrival was listen to a guest speaker talk about the logistics of shop floor planning. In a rather small plant, Continental must allocate space as wisely as possible. Every detail is taken into account and robots are tracked down to the very millisecond. On the tour of the facility, we were guiding by a retired worker, Mike, who still loves giving tours of the place he once worked. In comparison to MAN, both companies had extremely organized means of production. However, Continental was more automated and felt more advanced technologically.
After our tour at Continental, we departed to Regensburg. Getting off the bus, we crossed the footbridge over the Danube River. Regensburg consists of over 1,000 Middle Ages buildings, and the city was untouched during WWII. Historically, I found the city to be very intriguing, especially because of the Roman ties that the city has. On that note, we were able to tour the City Hall which was once home to the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire from the 17th to 19th centuries. In the city hall we explored the lavish wooden designs of guest and ball rooms while below we saw the gloomy dungeons. In the dungeons, they had various torture stations and unfriendly places to sleep for the misbehaved.
