I'm in Greenville, South Carolina this week to check out BMW's all new X6 sport activity coupe. Before we do that, we got to see a little bit on how the X6 is made at BMW's Spartanburg factory.
BMW makes all its global supply of Z4s, X5s, and now X6s at its Spartanburg plant. Every variation, including left- and right-hand drive models, all custom orders, and high-performance iterations like the M coupe, are made here. In fact, BMW folks say if that they ran two 10-hour shifts a day, five days a week, it would take six months before they'd be able to repeat a duplicate of one model. That's a lot of cars and combinations, considering each shift creates between 300 and 330 vehicles.
Spartanburg handles three main phases of X5, X6, and Z4 production - it's a body shop, paint shop, and assembly line. There's no engine plant here; all engines and transmissions are shipped from overseas, mainly BMW's Steyr engine plant in Austria.
Vehicle bodies start on the line as pallets of preformed steel and aluminum stampings. These chassis and body panel stampings are sourced locally, from companies including Spartanburg Steel and Budd, of Shelbyville, Kentucky. They are spot welded together by an impressive array of bright orange Kuka robots. Spot welding at Spartanburg is 100-percent automated and a jaw-dropping sight to behold. In many cases, the welding arm doesn't move; instead, a massive arm spins huge pieces of steel in a rapid choreographed motion around a fixed welding head.
BMW also uses magnesium inert gas welding for various stages of the chassis creation; all this welding is done by hand, due to the complexity of the process and machinery.
Welding isn't all they do to put these bodies together. BMW has implemented a much higher percentage of adhesives (yep, glue) into the creation of its chassis. Adhesives not only reduce cost, but are critical to "adding lightness" to vehicles like the X5 SUV. In an attempt to keep the weight down on this large SUV, BMW uses aluminum stampings instead of steel wherever possible. Problem is, there are no easy ways to weld steel and aluminum together. BMW's solution? Pop rivets and state-of-the-art adhesives.
Once the bodies are welded, glued, and screwed together, they travel to the paint shop, where they enter a highly automated and apparently environmentally friendly system. BMW's paint process employs six coats, including the final clear coat. The first four, including the primer, are water-based, while the fifth coat -- the actual color -- is the only one containing solvent.
BMW's guys also touted the awards they've won for having the first "green" paint shop. Apparently much of the shop apparatus, including the baking ovens, run on electricity converted onsite from methane gas captured at a local landfill.
The assembly line looks as you might imagine -- a continuous conga line of slow moving, partially built chassis meandering across the shop floor with gloved and goggled workers hovering about. The only difference here is that Spartanburg runs one line for all three different models it produces. That concept wouldn't be so weird if it were just X5 and X6 production, since both of those models share floor plans and engines, but it's pretty odd to see the bigger X-series bodies snaking in line with the odd Z4 coupe.
Stare at it long enough, and you realize what a staggering undertaking it all is. As each vehicle comes down the line, the order appears random. They don't produce vehicles in batches (100 X5s first, then 100 X6s, etc), but rather build them in the manner in which they were ordered. BMW offers such a high degree of customization, that this must be the way cars are built. Too bad it looks like a complete pain in the neck. As the vehicles mooch along the line, the proper bin, bucket, or pallets of parts -- each different according to the vehicle and order -- must be at the ready, otherwise the entire line would have to be shut down. From interior carpeting to iDrive system, HVAC to leather-wrapped steering wheel, each car can be, and often is, completely different. It boggles the mind.
Also interesting to note is that the BMW factory, with its polished floors and synchronized ballet of Kuka robots, feels so high-tech, it's almost -- well -- Japanese. Should be, I can tell by the color-coded bins, placards with words like "One-Piece Flow", and JIT (Just In Time) mentality (whizzing forklifts) that BMW has implemented the industry's gold standard for production efficiency -- aka TPS or Toyota Production System.
Of course, BMW would never cop to using a system developed by such a competitor (unlike Ford and other manufacturers, who love to use their adoption of TPS as a sign that they are with it) so they call their lean production philosophy VPS or Variable Production System. What's the difference? I dunno; maybe all the chassis' hanging from the ceiling...
A few other handy factoids:
* BMW's Spartanburg plant covers 1100 acres or 2.4 million square feet.
* Spartanburg employs 4600 in 11 10-hour shifts a week.
* With these 4600 employees, the Spartaburg plant employs more people in the county than Michelin, the other manufacturing heavyweight. They are second only to the Greenville school system as the largest employer in the county.
* Spartanburg averages anywhere from 300 to 330 vehicles per shift for a total of 240,000 units annually.
* Of these, roughly 60 percent are exported, primarily out of the deep-water bay at Charleston, South Carolina, but also out of Savannah, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida.
* BMW builds the world's supply of X5s, Z4s, and now X6s at Spartanburg. That includes right- and left-hand drive models, all engine variations, including diesels, and specialty vehicles like the M-coupe.
That's it for the BMW Spartanburg plant tour. Check back soon for the first drive of the all-new BMW X6.