Friday--Factory Tour, Driving School and Peace Center
(under construction)
Factory Facts
First some facts and figures about the plant. Construction began on the
1039-acre site in April 1993 and the first American-made BMW 3-Series rolled
off the line in September 1994, marking the fastest start-up in automobile manufacturing history. Z3 roadster production began in September 1995 and the
first Z3 roadster was exported to Germany in December 1995. Production of US-spec
Z3 roadsters started February 1996 and the plant currently makes only Z3 roadsters
(and M/coupé derivatives) and X5 SUVs (sports utility vehicles).
A 900,000-sq ft expansion to the original 1.2 million-sq ft plant began in February 1996. Of this approximately one-third was for Z3 family production the remainder was completed in the run up to the start of X5 production. Motorsport production began in January 1997 and the 100,000th Z3 roadster was produced in October 1997. Coupé production began in July 1998.
The expansion to build the X5 was publicly announced in May 1998 and X5 production began in September 1999, the same month as the 200,000th Z3 roadster was produced. An engineering analysis centre was added in 1999.
In 2000, BMW announced a 190,000-sq ft addition to the body shop which will "prepare the factory for future BMW models." Including tooling the investment total was put at $300m. Other recent additions include a $37 million 90,000-sq ft automated warehousing and sequencing centre, a $9 million additional stacker system to store painted bodies before they move into assembly, and a $16 million 18,000-sq ft IT centre.
The 100,000th X5 rolled off the line in August. Although the 250,000th Z3 roadster was produced in March 2001, sales have dropped from nearly 2,000 units in Q1 2000 to just over 1,300 units in Q1 2001. Whilst the US economy and stock market movements might well influences sales of the Z3 more than the X5, Robert Hitt, community relations manager at Spartanburg explains, "The Z3 is in the sixth year of its life. When it came out it had few competitors. It's not unusual to see sales flatten out at the end of its cycle."
Certainly there's no sign to a slowing of the plant expansion, indeed BMW has filed for a permit that would allow a more than doubling of the existing plant size over the next ten years without regulatory delays, "...in order to have the flexibility to respond quickly to market demands that may require BMW to build additional manufacturing facilities." No decision has been made, says BMW, but notes that expansion could add another 6,000 jobs.
Other pointers to expansion are that many of BMW's first-tier suppliers have completed or are in currently in the middle of dramatic plant expansions. Business is booming in the area as evidenced by the recently completed $47 million expansion to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, adding 2,000 ft to the length of the runway to allow fully-loaded BMW 747-200 cargo freighters to fly directly to and from Munich. Spartanburg now has the 19th longest runway in the US.
Factory Tour
Waiting outside the Zentrum for the 7.45am factory tour (yes, Homecoming
is hard work!), I met Steven and Linda Spenceley, a British couple living
near Toronto who had purchased their black M coupé just three weeks previously.
Because of their late registration they didn't have tickets for the factory tour
or the driving school, but no problem--I had a spare ticket as Irene had
decided that one factory visit per decade was enough and had disappeared
to the nearest shopping mall.
X5 Le Mans
No, we weren't taken into the $300m extension that will house the new Z3 body shop. However, although it was my third factory tour, I still learned a lot about production techniques.
KOVP and VIN numbering
The biggest change is almost unnoticeable. It's where the VIN numbering
takes place, part of a new customer-oriented sales and production process
known as KOVP. Spartanburg operates on a 'just-in-time' principle and
construction of a particular customer order isn't started until all the
required parts have been allocated--either as available stock or as expected
delivery.
Previously, one of the body shop robots would etch the VIN number into the chassis plate whilst the body-in-white (bare metal body) was still being assembled. The body would then be stored in the automated stacker before being processed through the paint shop along with other bodies of the same color. When paint shop finished with it, the body would be placed back in the stacker awaiting assembly. Sometimes it turns out that a particular part hasn't arrived, so the painted bodyshell has to remain in the stacker until parts are available. At the time of last year's tour there was a supply problem with the painted bumpers which come in from an outside supplier and quite a few cars on the line had black 'dummy' bumpers temporarily fitted so as to continue production.
Under the new scheme, bodyshell variants are kept to the absolute minimum and the VIN number is only assigned to the vehicle once it has been through the paint shop and it is known that all the parts are available. BMW points to the customer advantage of being able to make changes later on in the ordering process, but the real advantage is a streamlining of production, albeit at the cost of extra storage space.
Driving School
The next stop was driving school at the Performance Center,
a $12.5 million, 60,000-square-foot facility located on an adjacent
134-acre site.
Students line up for instructions
Tom McKinney (The Other Tom) in blue hat, white polo; Keith Wertman
in white T-shirt and jeans, with Debi in black top behind
It's at times such as this that the M roadster comes into its own.
Roadholding is vastly superior to the Z3
We did start to tot up BMW's investment in Performance Center cars.
There seemed to be hundreds of X5s.
Three red and three white 3 Series cars
are used on the skid pan
Most people noticed the solitary Z8 parked by the briefing
area. But only those with sharp eyesight saw the other seven
All eight are used by the Performance Center for driver training
Greenville Peace Center
There's a rule for Homecoming. Take the time that an event is due to start and assume everyone will have arrived an hour earlier. So leave yet another hour earlier if you want to be somewhere near the front of the queue.
Picture from Brent