Today started with an early morning, up before the sun, to take a 2.5 hour bus ride to Nuremberg to go to the factory visit of MAN (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG). This company specifically manufactures engines for larger scale vehicles like buses, trucks, boats, and aircrafts. I thought this was a good site visit, I was glad we got to see every part of the process from the construction of the batteries, to the engines, the quality control process, and even testing. Everything is done very neatly, with some construction being done by KUKA robots and a good amount done by humans. There was a large sum of humans on the floor, I’d say the second most out of all the companies we saw. This is because humans have better quality control than robots, so they ensure that defects don’t occur. It was also cool to see them rev the engines up by igniting them for testing. The presentation was also strong, I liked how they broke down precisely all the products they make and the specific engines too. It seems like MAN has a strong plan to reduce and eliminate their carbon emissions going into 2030, I’m curious to see if that works.
We also got to explore Nuremberg for a while which was a ton of fun, it is another very historic and architecturally nice city. We went to the Historischer Kunstbunker which was a beer cellar that turned into an art sanctuary during World War II. They used it to preserve and keep historical art safe from any bombings that could’ve occurred. The bunker was preserved well and we got to see how electricity, water, and life worked in there. We also were able to see and learn about Nuremberg before, during, and after the war. It was cool to hear that they wanted to rebuild it to be similar to its original construction rather than building it up into a city with skyscrapers. I enjoyed exploring after, walking through the streets and admiring the cathedrals and landmarks the town had. We also we to a street market where I had a very good nutella crepe and we shopped around while we took in the historical city we were in.
