Today we toured our first facility.. The drive was about an hour long. After arriving at the BMW facility the first thing that stood out to me was the sheer size of the factory and the museum. As we entered, I was astounded by the size of the operation.
As soon as you enter the facility you understand the importance of robots within production. You realize the difference between using robots and human labor. You see multiple robots completing different parts of the assembly. The first thing we saw was a robot that could work on multiple bodies at once, it’s allowed to rotate 360 and focus on 4 cars at once. The robot is able to pick up these heavy doors, allowing the workers to focus on different tasks. The other thing I noticed in this area was the use of the machines, the machines have doors that open and close for the workers to put the materials in. The tour guide mentioned that this factory produces one car every minute.
After this portion of the factory we then transition into the accessorized parts of the car. We saw the installation of chairs, dashboards, technology, lights and so on. This part was mostly done by humans, which made sense to me. We were able to see parts of the interior being installed. You’d see tires and chairs being transported down lines to workers to install. The part I thought was interesting, they would test the durability of the car. They would slam doors, push on them, push the windows, spam buttons, all to make sure the car was perfect. They pointed out that each worker has about 70 seconds to do their part of the assembly. If they fail to do so, they can stop the entire line. To keep the workers from going crazy, they transition roles every week or 2 days.
The BMW brand has deep ties to German identity and the Bavarian identity. While the BMW logo is often emphasized as being a plane propeller, the blue and white pattern reflects the colors of the Bavarian flag. The main question we were asked to answer was whehter or not BMW has a path forward with the changes in the automotive industry. I believe BMW is doing a great job. Instead of fully commiting to EV’s and autonomous vehicles they are slowly adapting them to their models. This allows them to see what works and what doesn’t work, which is much smarter than putting all of your resources in one basket and it potentialy failing.
