Another day, another tour. Today, we headed out to Regensburg to see Aumovio, a company that helps to develop the internal technology for digital displays in cars. Though it sounds a little bit less interesting than seeing luxury cars themself in production, I actually found this to be quite interesting.
I personally have experience building both mechanical keyboards and computers, so seeing the production of parts that are very close to those I’ve used more times than I can count was really cool. This time, we started off with an information session rather than the factory tour, and it was very beneficial to give us context for the operation at scale. Aumovio was formerly a subsect of Siemens and Continental, but broke off on its own as it delved deeper into the internals of cars rather than other, more external parts. In this meeting, we learned more about Aumovio’s history, and they even passed around some Printed Circuit Boards, or PCBs, allowing us to get our hands on the product that we would shortly be seeing in production.
After we wrapped up, we headed down to tour the factory. Seeing circuit boards in production seems like it could be a little boring, but for someone with really nerdy interests and experience utilizing similar hardware like myself, it felt both familiar and exciting. Before we could actually get on the floor, though, we had to get dressed in lab coats and shoe covers to ensure that we were static-proof.
There was a neat machine that tested us for any static charge, and out of everyone in my tour group, it seemed to have the biggest problem with me. After a few tries and failures, it gave me the green light to head in, knowing I couldn’t shock and ruin anything I touched. So in we went, and this factory was nothing like the others we had seen before. While BMW, KUKA, and MAN all made large vehicle parts and robots, Aumovio makes tiny circuit boards, meaning that production is a lot less space-intensive, and every corner of this factory was filled to the brim and buzzing. Our tour guide walked us through explaining how the parts were made, soldered together, and eventually made ready to go into a vehicle.
Then we headed off to Regensburg, where we got a quick tour of their old city hall, including their old torture chamber and holding cells underneath. While I would hate to have been someone actually subjected to the chamber back in the day, learning about it and seeing just how different things were hundreds of years ago was pretty interesting. After our tour, we wandered around, got even more coffee, and got ready to end our day in Regensburg.