This 12 months marked our third time becoming a member of BMW for its annual Duty Days, following earlier editions in South Africa in 2023 and San Luis Potosí, Mexico in 2024. This system is BMW’s manner of opening its doorways to indicate how the corporate is dealing with sustainability, workforce improvement, and industrial transformation throughout completely different areas. Every year focuses on a distinct plant and a distinct set of challenges, providing a direct have a look at how BMW’s long-term methods translate into day-to-day operations.
The 2025 version passed off in Munich, the place BMW is in the course of one of the complicated restructurings in its world manufacturing community. However earlier than visiting the plant, this system started the evening earlier than at Munich City Colab, a shared innovation hub BMW makes use of to collaborate with startups, universities, and metropolis companions. As a substitute of displays or product reveals, the night showcased corporations working with BMW on supplies and processes meant to cut back emissions and shut useful resource loops in manufacturing.
Pure-Fiber Elements Coming to BMW Vehicles
One of many suppliers on show, BComp, develops natural-fiber elements that would exchange carbon fiber in future purposes. BMW additionally confirmed an iX3 seat constructed solely from renewable or recycled supplies, a part of its circularity targets for future fashions. BMW additionally confirmed the brand new iX3’s frunk design, noting that the construction is constructed from recyclable supplies as a part of the model’s circularity technique.. Nothing proven that evening was theoretical; these had been early-stage options already being examined and evaluated for actual industrial use.
The session set the tone for the subsequent day, once we moved from prototypes into the locations the place BMW now has to implement these concepts at scale — the Munich plant, the Expertise Campus constructed on the previous engine plant footprint, and the Robotics and AI Coaching Middle, the place BMW is getting ready its workforce for brand spanking new manufacturing processes.
BMW Munich Plant: A Manufacturing unit Rebuilt Whereas Its Pulse Retains Going
The Munich plant is in the course of one of many most in depth rebuilds in BMW’s manufacturing community, and the work is occurring whereas the manufacturing unit continues operating at full velocity. Greater than 6,500 workers from over 60 nations maintain the road transferring, and a brand new automobile leaves the road roughly each 60 seconds. In 2024, the plant constructed greater than 83,500 totally electrical BMW i4 fashions, exhibiting how shortly EV manufacturing has scaled inside a website initially designed for combustion engines.
The problem now’s getting ready the plant for the Neue Klasse, which begins manufacturing in 2026, with out shutting down operations. As a result of the positioning is situated in the course of Munich and has no room to develop outward, BMW has to rebuild from inside. Round 33 % of the present buildings will likely be dismantled, and roughly 600,000 tons of fabric have to be eliminated as older buildings come down. On the identical time, BMW is including about 70,000 sq. meters of recent ground house, contributing to a complete of 250,000 sq. meters of recent gross ground space as soon as the challenge is full.
The brand new manufacturing halls are being designed as three-story buildings for meeting and physique store operations, a vertical strategy wanted to extend usable house on a plot that measures simply 500,000 sq. meters however already comprises over 620,000 sq. meters of manufacturing space by way of stacked layouts. BMW has set an 18-month timeline from the beginning of deconstruction to the purpose when new expertise have to be put in for the Neue Klasse. To clear house, the corporate is finishing up 13 main relocations, shifting gear, logistics routes, and departments into short-term areas.
The logistics concerned in maintaining the plant operational whereas development advances are substantial. Roughly 400 vans transfer out and in of the power daily, transporting particles out and bringing development supplies in. BMW says the brand new buildings will meet an vitality normal of 40 % of the reference worth, a part of a broader effort to cut back emissions throughout its manufacturing community. Total, there are 800 vans transferring out and in of the plant each single day, together with vans transporting elements or automobiles.
Few automotive crops try a change of this scale with out pausing manufacturing, and Munich’s constraints make the challenge much more complicated.
Later within the morning, throughout a roundtable dialogue, Ilka Horstmeier, BMW’s Board Member for Folks and Actual Property, provided an outline that aligned precisely with what we had seen.
“It’s like an open-heart surgical procedure daily,” she stated. “We’re remodeling this plant whereas we’re producing 1000 automobiles per day. It’s a logistical masterpiece… and that’s the way in which we run transformation at BMW — individuals, locations, manufacturing techniques. We predict all of them collectively.”
She spoke with the sort of candor that comes from managing the human facet of change as a lot because the operational facet. Nowhere was that clearer than when she mentioned the closure of the Munich engine plant, which had operated for greater than seventy years. The transition required relocating or reskilling 1,200 workers — individuals whose identities had been formed by constructing combustion engines, from four-cylinders to V12s.
“There was additionally unhealthy information,” Horstmeier stated. “Folks like their jobs. They like to supply eight-cylinders, twelve-cylinders. However we managed that.”
She described how BMW created individualized paths for each worker, mapping out what their first day, first week, and first month would appear to be. Her takeaway was easy: “Belief is perhaps essentially the most priceless forex in these transformative instances.”
Contained in the Expertise Campus: Coaching for a Workforce That Has to Rework Shortly
After the plant tour, this system moved a couple of minutes down the pedestrian walkway to BMW’s new Expertise Campus, constructed on the footprint of the previous Munich engine plant. The power is now the central coaching hub for roughly 40,000 BMW Group workers in Munich, and it displays the dimensions of the corporate’s workforce transition greater than any presentation may. BMW has invested greater than €1 billion in coaching and improvement over the previous three years, and the Expertise Campus reveals the place that cash goes.
BMW at present brings in round 1,200 vocational trainees yearly, unfold throughout 30 completely different coaching professions and 18 twin examine applications. Recruiters informed us the expertise pipeline has modified considerably prior to now decade. The corporate now depends on new recruitment channels, early engagement with college students, and nearer relationships with vocational colleges and universities to safe younger technical expertise. Apprentices are introduced in earlier, retained earlier, and given clearer improvement paths than prior to now. The purpose isn’t just to fill open roles however to construct a workforce able to adapting as manufacturing strategies evolve.
The coaching ecosystem behind the Expertise Campus is world. BMW runs vocational applications in 20 manufacturing areas and branches worldwide, with the biggest networks in Germany, the UK, the U.S. and Hungary. Germany alone accounts for round 3,865 trainees, supported by partnerships with 66 colleges, together with 33 vocational colleges and eight universities. Throughout the broader community, BMW works with faculties within the U.S., the UK, Brazil, Thailand, China, and Hungary, together with vocational-technical colleges in Austria and Mexico. In complete, the corporate estimates about 1,163 trainees are lively throughout its world Rolls-Royce and BMW Group areas.
Contained in the Munich Expertise Campus, the shift in coaching philosophy is instantly seen. Conventional workshop areas sit alongside digital coaching labs, robotics stations, automation techniques, and devoted areas for AI-based instruments. Apprentices rotate between VR welding simulators, robotic workstations, 3D printing areas, Microsoft Hololens environments, and CNC machining setups. Trainers consult with this as “future expertise” improvement — not simply educating a commerce, however educating workers to navigate expertise that evolves yearly.
BMW says greater than 75,000 workers per 12 months participate in {qualifications} associated to rising fields similar to high-voltage techniques, digital manufacturing instruments, and EV-related processes. Greater than 50,000 workers have already accomplished coaching particular to e-mobility. A lot of this work is completed in cooperation with universities, expertise companions, and different industrial corporations. Internally, BMW makes use of the Expertise Campus to pilot new educational strategies earlier than pushing them out to different crops worldwide.
Robotics and AI: Sensible Instruments Already Embedded within the Manufacturing unit
The ultimate cease of the day, the Robotics and AI Coaching Middle, provided a view into how digitalization is unfolding inside BMW’s crops. As a substitute of the big industrial robots usually related to automotive manufacturing, we noticed collaborative robotic arms being skilled for particular duties — gentle, versatile machines meant to help employees quite than exchange them. Staff learn to program these items, the way to troubleshoot, and the way to adapt them to workstations the place repetitive pressure or precision necessities make automation helpful.
AI made an look, however once more, not in a futuristic or summary manner. We noticed techniques used to research ergonomic posture by monitoring the human physique by way of motion, a technique initially developed for movement seize studios earlier than being tailored for office evaluation. BMW makes use of these measurements to revamp stations and scale back bodily pressure. In different rooms, defect-detection algorithms had been demonstrated — instruments that assist human inspectors by catching anomalies the attention could miss.
The constant message was that AI features as an assistant quite than an authority.
BMW repeatedly stresses that its long-term competitiveness depends upon lifelong studying, and the construction of the Expertise Campus makes that time clear. The corporate isn’t coaching workers for one job title or one part of the business. It’s attempting to organize them for a producing panorama that can proceed altering as electrification, software program integration, and round manufacturing reshape the work accomplished inside BMW’s crops.
A Technique That Adapts As a substitute of Predicts
One thread operating by way of the displays was BMW’s refusal to commit solely to a single technological end result. Horstmeier expressed this plainly throughout a strategic dialogue, acknowledging the uncertainties going through the business. “We don’t put all eggs in a single basket,” she stated. “Occasions are risky… The stipulations for 100% electrical even in Europe aren’t there and won’t be there till the 2030s.”
Her level wasn’t anti-electric. It aligned with what we noticed prior to now: factories being redefined so it may possibly deal with new electrical platforms whereas nonetheless supporting combustion-engine traces for markets that want them. BMW’s strategy isn’t about guessing the long run; it’s about constructing flexibility into the system so the corporate can transfer with it.
A Transformation Held Collectively by Folks
By the point we left the robotics heart late within the day, the widespread thread was fairly apparent. All the brand new expertise, infrastructure, and development mattered, however what tied your entire occasion collectively had been the individuals doing the work.
Horstmeier returned thus far repeatedly: “Transformation with our individuals is feasible,” she stated earlier within the day.
BMW Traditional: A Have a look at the Artwork Vehicles and the Cultural Facet of the Model
The primary day concluded at BMW Group Traditional, the place the corporate shifted the main focus from manufacturing and coaching to its long-running cultural applications. BMW used the setting to focus on the Artwork Automobile assortment, a challenge that dates again nearly 5 a long time and has concerned artists from all over the world.
Thomas Girst, BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement, walked us by way of the historical past of the Artwork Vehicles and defined how this system has developed alongside the model. Girst offered two important items from the gathering: the Alexander Calder Artwork Automobile, the primary automobile created for the collection in 1975, and Artwork Automobile No. 20, designed by Julie Mehretu and unveiled earlier this 12 months.
Girst emphasised that the Artwork Automobile challenge has by no means been about advertising and marketing however about long-term collaborations with artists who reinterpret BMW’s design language by way of their very own lens. Seeing Calder’s unique work subsequent to Mehretu’s newest entry underlined how this system has maintained continuity whereas permitting vastly completely different inventive approaches.
The go to added a cultural dimension to the Duty Days program, exhibiting how BMW frames its industrial transformation inside a broader context that features design, heritage, and inventive partnerships. Keep tuned for the third installment of the BMW Duty Days which features a go to to the brand new battery plant in Irlbach-Straßkirchen, adopted by a final cease in Landshut.
