BMW Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Its Munich Home Plant

May 20, 2022

Munich. The BMW Team is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Munich residence plant. The business has been manufacturing its products and solutions as “Bayerische Motoren Werke” at the website in the Milbertshofen district because 1922. At an function to mark the anniversary, CEO Oliver Zipse emphasized how: “Our dwelling plant – suitable in the heart of the metropolis that is Munich – has defied the aspects of time. Simply because there have normally been people today who held this site transferring, usually with the right intuition for the instances and, above all, with a obvious watch to the potential.” Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter spoke of a “strong determination to Munich as a business enterprise hub.”

It all commenced with plane engines and bikes. Then, from 1952, the plant moved on to start off generating cars and trucks, which are however famous the entire world over to this working day, together with the iconic BMW Isetta, racing legends these as the M3 and, since 1975, the most successful of all BMW designs: the BMW 3 Series. “Our roots are in Munich. This plant is our origin. And our foreseeable future,” stated Milan Nedeljković, Member of the Board of Management for Manufacturing at BMW AG: “It’s a significant-tech output website. All around 900 best-excellent BMWs depart this plant each and every day. 5 distinct versions with all forms of push. This proves the higher flexibility, but also the huge breadth of expertise and techniques of the men and women who get the job done listed here. They are the driving pressure driving almost everything that transpires here.”

In its 100th anniversary yr, the Munich plant is impressively demonstrating the major part it performs in the age of electromobility. The all-electric powered BMW i4, for instance, by now helps make up a quarter of the generation quantity – and growing: “The demand among the our clients for the new BMW i4 is huge – so we’re ramping up generation even additional. Future yr previously, each and every second car or truck leaving the Munich plant will be totally electric powered. Going by current designs, that usually means far more than 100,000 BMW i4s from the coronary heart of Munich for buyers all above the globe,” introduced Oliver Zipse, with Milan Nedeljković including: “This implies that, by 2023, our house plant will by now have obtained the BMW Group’s world wide purpose for 2030, namely to maximize our proportion of BEVs to 50 percent”.

“The introduction of the BMW i4 was an outstanding feat of integration into an current output technique, and demonstrates the plant’s monumental potential for transformation,” Plant Manager Peter Weber additional. “Within a lot less than five yrs, we have advanced from only manufacturing combustion engines to generating hybrids and the fully electric powered i4. This means that we now manufacture five unique styles with all the distinct push sorts on a person output line. This displays that this manufacturing unit certainly understands transformation and is the embodiment of transform and overall flexibility.”

In conjunction with the BMW Group’s Investigation and Innovation Heart (FIZ), the Munich plant has constantly served as an inside centre of excellence, disseminating awareness about procedures and technologies, as very well as the working experience gleaned from 100 years of engine and auto creation to other plants all around the planet. Examples of this modern prowess contain making the initial sequence of the totally electrical MINI E, the legendary Z8, and the electric unique edition of the BMW 1602 for the Summer months Olympics in 1972. Not to mention Task i, culminating in the groundbreaking BMW i3, which also originated at the Munich plant.

The Munich plant’s sturdy posture as a paragon of the BMW Group’s creation community, now and in the foreseeable future, is shown by its transformation into an iFACTORY – the strategic learn plan devised by BMW Team Generation, emphasizing ‘lean’, ‘green’ and ‘digital’. Generation Board Member Nedeljković: “The BMW iFACTORY epitomizes what we are aiming for with our output in the potential and is placing new expectations. We are utilizing them globally, in all our plants – here in Munich as very well as in our new plant in Debrecen, Hungary.”

The Munich plant’s construction is also undergoing transformation. The site of the former paint shop is currently being transformed into a new human body development facility, and from 2024 the enterprise will be constructing a entirely new assembly to make the all-electric ‘Neue Klasse’ on the site of the current motor-building facility. “This will preserve the Munich plant competitive and guarantee it remains a ahead-looking manufacturing internet site,” emphasized Plant Manager Peter Weber.

Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter highlighted the reality that the plant has continued to evolve in parallel with the residential city spot that surrounds it and has remained a precious employer: “The BMW father or mother plant in Munich has played a especially significant job in BMW’s accomplishment story, which spans around 100 years. It has developed pioneering vehicles – this sort of as the Neue Klasse in the 1960s and the 3 Sequence – which had been instrumental in creating the enterprise a success,” explained Reiter at the anniversary celebration. “As a final result, I am all the extra happy that BMW ideas to establish its dwelling plant in an modern and sustainable way in accordance to its ‘urban production’ motto, having into account the industry’s transformation toward electromobility and digitalization. This is a robust determination to Munich as a business place and to securing and creating careers in our town in the extended time period. I would like to thank the organization for this endeavor and supply my honest congratulations on the 100th anniversary of BMW’s 1st plant,” Reiter included.

The mayor also talked over the effects of the not long ago concluded architecture opposition “BMW Munich – City Production”, which the corporation launched in drop 2021 in partnership with the state money Munich. The aim was to capitalize on the plant’s exceptional area in the city center. This will involve generating the total advanced visibly far more accessible and open up to its neighbors.

The two successful places of work, OMA from Rotterdam and 3XN from Copenhagen, made the decision on a joint endeavor to additional produce their patterns, and introduced this thought to a significant-caliber jury very last week. Their eyesight for the long term of creation at the BMW Group plant in Munich will now be made use of to build a new master approach.

With this grasp approach, as well as the structural optimizations already in the performs, the Munich plant will aim on the BMW iFACTORY rules LEAN. Green. Digital. With each other, these concepts make sure that this exclusive site – the BMW Group’s century-old parent plant – will have utmost versatility, excellent processes and exceptional integration capacities over the coming decades.