[MUNICH] German automaker BMW Group's newest plant will be its cleanest to date, and boasts industry-leading flexibility in switching between the production of different versions of cars.
"We are running a very flexible system where we can change the production sequences for cars just six days before assembly starts," Dr Milan Nedeljkovic, BMW Group board of management member for production, told The Business Times.
"This is unique (to) BMW. No one else has this," Dr Nedeljkovic said in a Sep 5 interview on the sidelines of the debut of BMW's iX3 electric vehicle (EV) - the first car that will be produced by the new plant in Debrecen, Hungary.
Production begins in October. The facility can adapt quickly to changes in production volume or model type, or to shortages of certain components. Such adjustments can be made in less than a week, compared with the industry standard of around a month.
That is thanks to a new system, known internally as Factoryverse, which digitally plans production and monitors it in real time. Debuted at Debrecen, the system will later be introduced to other BMW factories around the world, starting with those in Germany, Mexico and China.
Completed in 2024, the new facility spans 400 hectares (ha) and will have around 1,500 employees when production starts in full.
It initially cost one billion euros (S$1.5 billion), but this rose to two billion euros when BMW announced that the plant would also assemble EV batteries, to be used in EVs produced there.
The first such vehicle will be the iX3, which kicks off BMW's Neue Klasse series. This is a major reboot of the technology and model range, under which 40 new or updated vehicles will be introduced by 2027.
The plant's peak capacity is 150,000 vehicles a year. It will be BMW's least-polluting factory, cutting per vehicle emissions in production by 90 per cent to 34 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent.
A quarter of its energy is supplied by an on-site 50 ha solar park that generates up to 54 gigawatt hours and is connected to a thermal energy storage system. The rest is outsourced renewable energy.
One significant source of emissions reductions is the plant's paint shop. It is warmed by electricity, unlike conventional paint shops that are heated by gas, and has systems that improve efficiency by reclaiming lost energy and reducing the amount of heat required.
Various elements of the digital Factoryverse system, such as automated production and inspection, have been developed by BMW in other plants over the years. However, Debrecen is the first to combine them into one.
The system also includes a "digital twin" of the facility, created with US tech giant Nvidia and its Omniverse software.
This digital twin has allowed BMW engineers worldwide to work together to plan production efficiently, as well as apply and improve best practices from the automaker's existing factories.
All machinery, tools and components are integrated in the system, allowing for artificial intelligence-assisted digital quality checks during production.
The cars produced are part of the system too - the iX3's on-board computers exchange data with the network, analyse data and store records.
"The car has all its production data, all its process data from each machinery with it. If in the field it has a problem years later, you could look at all the parameters and understand what is wrong," said Dr Nedeljkovic.