BMW Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Its Munich Home Plant

May well 20, 2022

Munich. The BMW Team is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Munich home plant. The firm has been manufacturing its solutions as “Bayerische Motoren Werke” at the web page in the Milbertshofen district given that 1922. At an party to mark the anniversary, CEO Oliver Zipse emphasised how: “Our house plant – right in the coronary heart of the metropolis that is Munich – has defied the factors of time. Since there have always been people today who retained this website relocating, often with the suitable instinct for the situations and, above all, with a crystal clear view to the long run.” Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter spoke of a “strong commitment to Munich as a enterprise hub.”

It all started off with plane engines and motorcycles. Then, from 1952, the plant moved on to start producing vehicles, which are even now popular the planet about to this day, like the iconic BMW Isetta, racing legends these kinds of as the M3 and, because 1975, the most productive of all BMW models: the BMW 3 Collection. “Our roots are in Munich. This plant is our origin. And our potential,” claimed Milan Nedeljković, Member of the Board of Administration for Production at BMW AG: “It’s a large-tech output web-site. About 900 major-high quality BMWs depart this plant just about every day. 5 distinctive models with all varieties of travel. This proves the high overall flexibility, but also the huge breadth of practical experience and abilities of the people today who perform listed here. They are the driving power driving all the things that transpires below.”

In its 100th anniversary year, the Munich plant is impressively demonstrating the major function it plays in the age of electromobility. The all-electrical BMW i4, for case in point, now would make up a quarter of the generation volume – and mounting: “The demand from customers among the our buyers for the new BMW i4 is huge – so we’re ramping up manufacturing even even further. Next year by now, each and every next automobile leaving the Munich plant will be entirely electric powered. Heading by existing programs, that usually means a lot more than 100,000 BMW i4s from the coronary heart of Munich for shoppers all about the globe,” declared Oliver Zipse, with Milan Nedeljković introducing: “This suggests that, by 2023, our property plant will already have obtained the BMW Group’s international target for 2030, specifically to boost our proportion of BEVs to 50 percent”.

“The introduction of the BMW i4 was an impressive feat of integration into an existing production technique, and demonstrates the plant’s monumental potential for transformation,” Plant Supervisor Peter Weber extra. “Within considerably less than 5 yrs, we have advanced from only making combustion engines to creating hybrids and the thoroughly electrical i4. This indicates that we now manufacture five distinct styles with all the diverse travel forms on just one production line. This displays that this manufacturing unit genuinely understands transformation and is the embodiment of adjust and overall flexibility.”

In conjunction with the BMW Group’s Investigation and Innovation Heart (FIZ), the Munich plant has constantly served as an inner centre of excellence, disseminating information about processes and technologies, as nicely as the encounter gleaned from 100 many years of motor and car or truck generation to other plants about the environment. Examples of this innovative prowess include things like making the 1st collection of the absolutely electrical MINI E, the legendary Z8, and the electric powered distinctive edition of the BMW 1602 for the Summertime Olympics in 1972. Not to point out Job i, culminating in the groundbreaking BMW i3, which also originated at the Munich plant.

The Munich plant’s powerful position as a paragon of the BMW Group’s production network, now and in the long run, is shown by its transformation into an iFACTORY – the strategic grasp program devised by BMW Group Generation, emphasizing ‘lean’, ‘green’ and ‘digital’. Generation Board Member Nedeljković: “The BMW iFACTORY epitomizes what we are aiming for with our generation in the long run and is placing new expectations. We are implementing them globally, in all our vegetation – in this article in Munich as properly as in our new plant in Debrecen, Hungary.”

The Munich plant’s construction is also going through transformation. The web site of the former paint store is remaining converted into a new human body construction facility, and from 2024 the enterprise will be setting up a wholly new assembly to make the all-electric powered ‘Neue Klasse’ on the internet site of the current engine-setting up facility. “This will preserve the Munich plant competitive and guarantee it remains a ahead-hunting production web-site,” emphasized Plant Supervisor Peter Weber.

Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter highlighted the truth that the plant has ongoing to evolve in parallel with the residential urban place that surrounds it and has remained a precious employer: “The BMW mother or father plant in Munich has performed a specifically sizeable position in BMW’s achievement tale, which spans above 100 many years. It has manufactured groundbreaking automobiles – this kind of as the Neue Klasse in the 1960s and the 3 Sequence – which were being instrumental in creating the enterprise a achievement,” said Reiter at the anniversary function. “As a result, I am all the much more delighted that BMW ideas to establish its dwelling plant in an innovative and sustainable way in accordance to its ‘urban production’ motto, using into account the industry’s transformation toward electromobility and digitalization. This is a strong determination to Munich as a company location and to securing and producing positions in our city in the prolonged term. I would like to thank the firm for this endeavor and offer my sincere congratulations on the 100th anniversary of BMW’s 1st plant,” Reiter additional.

The mayor also talked over the benefits of the just lately concluded architecture competitiveness “BMW Munich – Urban Production”, which the organization launched in tumble 2021 in partnership with the state capital Munich. The purpose was to capitalize on the plant’s special area in the town centre. This will entail generating the whole intricate visibly far more available and open to its neighbors.

The two successful workplaces, OMA from Rotterdam and 3XN from Copenhagen, decided on a joint endeavor to additional produce their layouts, and introduced this strategy to a significant-caliber jury very last 7 days. Their vision for the potential of manufacturing at the BMW Group plant in Munich will now be used to build a new master approach.

With this grasp system, as properly as the structural optimizations presently in the will work, the Munich plant will concentrate on the BMW iFACTORY ideas LEAN. Green. Electronic. Alongside one another, these rules make sure that this special web-site – the BMW Group’s century-old father or mother plant – will have optimum flexibility, superb processes and excellent integration capacities in excess of the coming a long time.