Plant Visit | AllAboutLean.com https://www.allaboutlean.com Organize your Industry! Fri, 28 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cropped-Brain-512px-2-150x150.png Plant Visit | AllAboutLean.com https://www.allaboutlean.com 32 32 56866218 The Grand Tour of German Automotive—Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-mercedes-sindelfingen/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-mercedes-sindelfingen/#comments Tue, 25 Jun 2024 11:00:43 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=33124 My Grand Tour of German Automotive continues now with plants from Mercedes-Benz (also known as Daimler). I visited a total of four plants from Mercedes-Benz, including all three automotive final assembly plants Sindelfingen, Bremen, and Rastatt. I also had a tour at their quite good Daimler truck plant in Wörth, the largest heavy-duty truck plant ... Read more

The post The Grand Tour of German Automotive—Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-mercedes-sindelfingen/feed/ 5 33124
The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Berlin Motorbikes https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-berlin/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-berlin/#respond Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:00:03 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32907 The last plant of BMW I visited in Germany was in Spandau, Berlin. This was different from BMW Munich and Leipzig. For one, it makes motorbikes, not cars. But its performance was also not as stellar as the best of (German) benchmark plants Leipzig and Munich. But despite some issues, it still performed on an ... Read more

The post The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Berlin Motorbikes first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-berlin/feed/ 0 32907
The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Leipzig https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-leipzig/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-leipzig/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2024 11:00:03 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32906 The second BMW plant I visited was in Leipzig. This modern greenfield plant had a very good material flow, where especially the finger line impressed me a lot. In terms of efficiency it was the best-performing plant in Germany, shortly after Munich, and on par with Toyota. It was also exceptionally clean. The only flaw ... Read more

The post The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Leipzig first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-leipzig/feed/ 3 32906
The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Munich https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-munich/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-munich/#comments Tue, 04 Jun 2024 11:00:33 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32609 The Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, or short BMW, is a maker of luxury vehicles, sport cars, and motorcycles. As part of my Grand Tour of German Automotive I visited their plants in Munich and Leipzig, and was quite impressed. In my view, it these are the best-performing automotive plants in Germany, and close to the ... Read more

The post The Grand Tour of German Automotive—BMW Munich first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-bmw-munich/feed/ 1 32609
The Grand Tour of German Automotive—Overview https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-overview/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-overview/#comments Tue, 28 May 2024 11:00:43 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32615 In 2017-18, I had the chance to visit factories of all seven Japanese car makers as part of my Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive. In the last few weeks, I had the chance to repeat this for Germany and do a Grand Tour of German Automotive. Let me show you what I saw and what ... Read more

The post The Grand Tour of German Automotive—Overview first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/grand-tour-german-automotive-overview/feed/ 1 32615
The BMW Finger Line Layout https://www.allaboutlean.com/bmw-finger-line/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/bmw-finger-line/#respond Tue, 09 Apr 2024 11:00:56 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32690 As part of my grand tour of German automotive, I visited the BMW plant in Leipzig. As of now, this is my second most favorite German automotive plant, after BMW in Munich. I will talk more about this quite well-organized and indeed beautiful plant in a later post series, but in this post I’m going ... Read more

The post The BMW Finger Line Layout first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/bmw-finger-line/feed/ 0 32690
Variable Takt at Fendt in Marktoberdorf—Part 3 https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-3/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-3/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2024 11:00:25 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32551 This is the third post in my series on how Fendt handles its rather large variability. As mentioned before, all of their tractors—eleven different models with countless variants—come from the same assembly line in Marktoberdorf. This includes small tractors that are just barely one meter wide and huge ones as you see here on the ... Read more

The post Variable Takt at Fendt in Marktoberdorf—Part 3 first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-3/feed/ 4 32551
Variable Takt at Fendt in Marktoberdorf—Part 2 https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-2/ https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-2/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2024 11:00:10 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=32520 In my previous post I started to show you how Fendt uses the distance between tractors on their assembly line to manage their quite high variability. By changing the distance between parts on the line, you can adjust the takt time for each part on the assembly line, hence the name Variable Takt. But this ... Read more

The post Variable Takt at Fendt in Marktoberdorf—Part 2 first appeared on AllAboutLean.com.]]>
https://www.allaboutlean.com/fendt-variable-takt-2/feed/ 1 32520