Today, we visited the Mercedes Benz plant in Bremen and it was absolutely incredible. We walked into their customer service and showroom and got a peak of their current master piece vehicles as well as the future of Mercedes. Before we started the tour, we got some quick facts from Spencer that are a little shocking. During their 5-6 day work week, the Mercedes Benz plant in Bremen produces 420,000 cars every single year, and they have over 12,000 employees. Unfortunately, the timeline for one vehicle was considered “classified information”.
Walking through the various buildings in the complex and seeing how every part of the car was made, made it clear to me how they could possibly produce at the numbers they do. In parts of their plant, they are up to 95% robot automation in their assembly which was fascinating to watch all of them move at the same time. Along with that, every robot can work on every car seamlessly, and it was interesting to see a sedan followed by a SUV followed by a convertible. They also use every square inch of their facility when producing their vehicles which shows how much they value efficiency. Like our tour guide said, “they aren’t building a car, they’re building your car” and they want it to be perfect so every extra thing they do has a unique purpose to increase the overall value of the car to the customer.
Overall, I thought it was a great visit. The facilities were very well put together and we got to learn a ton about how they operate with robot integration. This was absolutely my favorite visit of the trip!