BMW Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Its Munich Home Plant

Might 20, 2022

Munich. The BMW Team is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Munich household plant. The company has been manufacturing its products and solutions as “Bayerische Motoren Werke” at the web site in the Milbertshofen district due to the fact 1922. At an function to mark the anniversary, CEO Oliver Zipse emphasized how: “Our dwelling plant – correct in the heart of the metropolis that is Munich – has defied the aspects of time. Due to the fact there have usually been individuals who stored this site moving, always with the correct instinct for the moments and, higher than all, with a obvious watch to the long run.” Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter spoke of a “strong dedication to Munich as a company hub.”

It all commenced with aircraft engines and motorcycles. Then, from 1952, the plant moved on to commence developing autos, which are however famous the environment more than to this day, which includes the legendary BMW Isetta, racing legends such as the M3 and, given that 1975, the most productive of all BMW models: the BMW 3 Sequence. “Our roots are in Munich. This plant is our origin. And our foreseeable future,” mentioned Milan Nedeljković, Member of the Board of Administration for Manufacturing at BMW AG: “It’s a large-tech manufacturing web site. All around 900 best-high quality BMWs go away this plant each working day. 5 different products with all kinds of travel. This proves the high versatility, but also the wide breadth of practical experience and capabilities of the people today who get the job done below. They are the driving drive driving everything that comes about right here.”

In its 100th anniversary year, the Munich plant is impressively demonstrating the primary job it plays in the age of electromobility. The all-electric powered BMW i4, for instance, already can make up a quarter of the production quantity – and climbing: “The desire between our consumers for the new BMW i4 is tremendous – so we’re ramping up production even further more. Up coming 12 months already, every second automobile leaving the Munich plant will be entirely electric. Likely by present-day strategies, that suggests more than 100,000 BMW i4s from the heart of Munich for buyers all over the globe,” introduced Oliver Zipse, with Milan Nedeljković incorporating: “This signifies that, by 2023, our home plant will previously have achieved the BMW Group’s worldwide target for 2030, specifically to improve our proportion of BEVs to 50 percent”.

“The introduction of the BMW i4 was an extraordinary feat of integration into an existing generation method, and demonstrates the plant’s enormous capacity for transformation,” Plant Supervisor Peter Weber added. “Within a lot less than five many years, we have advanced from only creating combustion engines to creating hybrids and the thoroughly electric i4. This signifies that we now manufacture 5 diverse types with all the distinct drive kinds on a person production line. This reveals that this factory truly understands transformation and is the embodiment of alter and versatility.”

In conjunction with the BMW Group’s Study and Innovation Middle (FIZ), the Munich plant has constantly served as an internal heart of excellence, disseminating expertise about processes and systems, as nicely as the experience gleaned from 100 several years of engine and automobile manufacturing to other crops all-around the environment. Examples of this ground breaking prowess incorporate producing the very first sequence of the entirely electric MINI E, the iconic Z8, and the electrical particular edition of the BMW 1602 for the Summer season Olympics in 1972. Not to point out Venture i, culminating in the revolutionary BMW i3, which also originated at the Munich plant.

The Munich plant’s solid placement as a paragon of the BMW Group’s output network, now and in the long run, is shown by its transformation into an iFACTORY – the strategic learn program devised by BMW Group Creation, emphasizing ‘lean’, ‘green’ and ‘digital’. Creation Board Member Nedeljković: “The BMW iFACTORY epitomizes what we are aiming for with our creation in the upcoming and is environment new requirements. We are utilizing them globally, in all our vegetation – in this article in Munich as well as in our new plant in Debrecen, Hungary.”

The Munich plant’s structure is also going through transformation. The web-site of the former paint shop is staying transformed into a new body building facility, and from 2024 the business will be developing a entirely new assembly to develop the all-electric powered ‘Neue Klasse’ on the web page of the existing engine-building facility. “This will continue to keep the Munich plant aggressive and make certain it stays a forward-wanting creation web page,” emphasised Plant Manager Peter Weber.

Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter highlighted the actuality that the plant has ongoing to evolve in parallel with the household urban area that surrounds it and has remained a beneficial employer: “The BMW dad or mum plant in Munich has played a specially substantial function in BMW’s achievement story, which spans over 100 many years. It has created revolutionary motor vehicles – this kind of as the Neue Klasse in the 1960s and the 3 Series – which ended up instrumental in producing the corporation a results,” said Reiter at the anniversary party. “As a consequence, I am all the extra happy that BMW options to establish its property plant in an impressive and sustainable way according to its ‘urban production’ motto, taking into account the industry’s transformation towards electromobility and digitalization. This is a powerful dedication to Munich as a company location and to securing and making employment in our metropolis in the lengthy time period. I would like to thank the company for this endeavor and offer my honest congratulations on the 100th anniversary of BMW’s 1st plant,” Reiter added.

The mayor also talked over the results of the not too long ago concluded architecture levels of competition “BMW Munich – City Production”, which the corporation introduced in tumble 2021 in partnership with the condition capital Munich. The goal was to capitalize on the plant’s exceptional site in the town center. This will include making the full intricate visibly a lot more obtainable and open up to its neighbors.

The two profitable places of work, OMA from Rotterdam and 3XN from Copenhagen, determined on a joint endeavor to more acquire their styles, and introduced this idea to a higher-caliber jury final week. Their vision for the long run of production at the BMW Group plant in Munich will now be utilized to build a new grasp prepare.

With this master strategy, as very well as the structural optimizations now in the will work, the Munich plant will target on the BMW iFACTORY principles LEAN. Green. Digital. Jointly, these rules make certain that this distinctive internet site – the BMW Group’s century-old father or mother plant – will have maximum flexibility, fantastic processes and excellent integration capacities about the coming a long time.