We had a much needed later start today and I was feeling very refreshed and excited to finally see Audi, the company I’m presenting on. We had the Audi speaker a week ago so I was looking forward to bringing everything that was said to life. The Audi campus was so grand and very modern. We started in the gift shop because we had some time to spare and everything was so high end. They even had some Audi cars all over the lobby for people to see. The factory tour was probably my favorite. We started at the press shop which was almost completely automated, only a handful of humans there to manage quality control and maintenance. We got to go right next to the robots, unlike BMW where we looked down from afar for most of the process. Seeing their scale and how quickly they moved up close was super cool. In the body shop, the coolest part was seeing the cars conveyed in the air over our heads. There were also a lot of humans here doing some of the more precise work and putting the car parts together. At Audi, I saw that there were more humans on the floor, the guide said that having to change the robots programming for each type of car would take too long., so humans are more efficient in that boat. What I found interesting was that Audi actually produced more cars per day than BMW, 2,000 compared to a little over 1,000 at BMW. I think the production plant at Audi moved so much quicker and smoother and even though there were more humans on the floor, there were still a ton of robots helping to move the cars through each shop than at BMW. The workplace environments of Audi and BMW seemed close, they both do a lot for employee satisfaction. Employees change jobs daily so that they don’t get bored and both mentioned pay raises after some years working. Everyone was equally passionate about the company they belong to. While BMW is in Munich, a large city where a lot of people do different things for work, Audi is in Ingolstadt, which is much smaller. A majority of people who live there work for Audi, it seems very community oriented. The tour guide said his father and grandfather also worked at the Audi Headquarters there. 

The Canteen at Audi was so nice, the food was really good. There were so many options from Schnitzel to Chicken skewers, cakes, and salad. We enjoyed a good lunch after a fun factory tour before ending our experience at the museum. I will say I liked the BMW museum better; it was more interactive and easier to follow. The Audi museum was still very interesting, I liked how it showed all the models from Audi’s first car to now. I think if I had to choose to work for one, I would work for Audi because I thought the facilities were more high-tech, fast paced, and had a larger campus than BMW.