A short report from Alec Clelland about our plant tour of the BMW Group's headquarters in Munich on 24th. November 2017. Thanks to Alec for organising this.
14 IET members and friends turned up for a Friday afternoon visit to the main Munich BMW factory. Such visits are so popular that the reservation had to be made nearly nine months in advance. We started off in the futuristic "BMW Welt" with a display of BMWs from the modest Isetta to the latest Rolls-Royce. After a short film about the company we walked across the road to the actual factory and started with the enormous sheet metal presses, each weighing tens of tons but amazingly well damped - they have to be, as the factory is within the city limits and space limitations means it is built over several floors. We moved on to car body assembly and noted that there seem to be far more industrial robots than people in the factory. Everything works on a just-in-time basis so that delivery lorries have a brief window measured in minutes. BMW is famous for the quality of its engines and although these are mostly built elsewhere we were shown several models. Disappointingly the paint shop was closed to visitors but the two and a half hours were time well spent.
Alec Clelland