BMW plans factory of the future: "We can do without gas"

Created: 05/03/2022 10:41 am

All BMW plants worldwide should one day be iFactories that set standards in terms of sustainability.

In addition, the Munich car manufacturer promises maximum flexibility in production and data in real time from all plants.

©BMW

BMW is considered the largest manufacturer of premium cars.

Now the Bavarians are focusing on production.

Your iFactory will set standards worldwide and revolutionize car manufacturing.

Munich – The future of BMW begins in Hungary.

"Debrecen will be the first car factory in the world that completely dispenses with the use of fossil fuels," enthuses Milan Nedeljkovic.

When the BMW production board member said that, there was a muffled buzzing and knocking through thick panes that separate the offices from a production line in the main plant in Munich.

BMW is presenting the future of car manufacturing there, as the new Debrecen plant will not go into operation until 2025.

It's not just any factory, Nedeljkovic makes clear.

Rather, it will be the first of its kind, according to which all BMW plants will be rebuilt in order to set the pace in car manufacturing throughout the industry.

The new iFactory from BMW: "We can do without gas"

The project also reflects highly topical problems.

"We can do without gas and generate our own energy on the factory premises," says the BMW board member about an element of the iFactory.

In Debrecen, that means geothermal energy and solar cells instead of Russian gas.

This is important because, as is typical in the industry, up to now 70 percent of the energy consumed in car manufacturing has come from gas and 30 percent from electricity.

In this respect, a gas-free Debrecen sets real standards.

Sustainability is a pillar of the new BMW production philosophy.

In addition to CO2-free production, this means above all a circular economy, which Nedeljkovic distinguishes from mere recycling.

"With circularity, an old seat cover becomes a new seat cover", he explains the difference to recycling for other products.

BMW is already producing in a way that conserves resources.

At the Munich main plant, there was just 2.6 kilograms of waste per car.

Now even aluminum chips are becoming part of the new circularity.

Between 2016 and 2019, BMW was able to reduce emissions of the climate killer carbon dioxide (CO2) per vehicle in production by almost a third.

By 2025, it is expected to shrink by a further 40 percent compared to 2019 and by 80 percent by 2030.

Electrical plans and supply industry

If BMW wants to reduce the ecological footprint in its own factories by 80 percent in terms of CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2019, that will only defuse part of the problem.

Because before that, climate pollutants are produced by suppliers.

BMW has therefore agreed with them on a CO2 reduction of one fifth per vehicle by 2030.

CO2 emissions from vehicle operation are to be halved by then.

BMW was considered a German electric pioneer in 2013 when the i3 model, designed for electric mobility, came onto the market.

Since then, domestic competitors such as VW and Mercedes have formulated more demanding electric targets and phase-out dates for combustion technology.

After all, BMW wants to have 13 all-electric models in its range next year and two million all-electric vehicles on the road worldwide by 2025.

BMW's iFactory: combustion engines and electric cars on one line

The iFactory concept with the prototype in Debrecen makes this possible.

At its core, it is a new production architecture specially designed for electromobility, which does not mean that BMW is renouncing combustion engines or giving them an expiry date.

"We can use it to build all drive variants on one line in all plants, from fully electric to hybrid to combustion engines," says BMW assembly planner Torsten Krzywania.

The iFactory is also uniquely flexible when production has to be shut down and restarted quickly because a pandemic is just breaking out or supply chains are shaky, parts are missing and equipment details have to be rescheduled at short notice.

Nedeljkovic emphasizes that flexibility is the ultimate success factor when customer demand changes quickly and suddenly everyone in a certain market wants all-electric cars.

BMW does not assume that electromobility will make its breakthrough everywhere at the same time.

"Being flexible in terms of volume" is what the manager calls it. Even today, a BMW customer can change specifications such as color or seat covers up to six days before the start of production of his dream car.

BMW: "iFactory brings efficiency gain of a quarter"

The iFactory also has a digital mainstay, parts of which can already be seen in the main plant in Munich.

"This is predictive maintenance," explains a BMW assembly expert.

He points to sensors on the electric monorail that drives the car bodies through the assembly hall.

The special thing about it, which BMW has also patented, is artificial intelligence that analyzes all the production data collected by the sensors in real time.

"The system reports before it breaks down, and without false alarms," ​​says the BMW employee proudly.

Then repairs are carried out quickly before a defect shuts down the system.

A complete shift of downtime saves such predictive maintenance per plant and year, which corresponds to a production volume of around 500 cars.

"Digitization is at the tipping point, now it starts," says Nedeljkovic, meaning digitization in production.

That's why there will be something similar to Google's Streetview from the end of 2022 for all BMW plants worldwide.

The Munich-based company measures its factories digitally and three-dimensionally in order to create digital twins, which are then available to production planners around the world around the clock.

"The iFactory brings an efficiency gain of a quarter," believes Nedeljkovic.

That doesn't mean job cuts, he assures.

One or the other job would be lost.

"But BMW is a growing company, so we don't see any personnel problems," explains the manager.