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 point out how the corporate is dealing with sustainability, workforce improvement, and industrial transformation throughout totally different areas. Annually 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 occurred in Munich, the place BMW is in the course of one of the vital complicated restructurings in its world manufacturing community. However earlier than visiting the plant, this system started the night time earlier than at Munich City Colab, a shared innovation hub BMW makes use of to collaborate with startups, universities, and metropolis companions. As an alternative of shows or product reveals, the night showcased firms working with BMW on supplies and processes meant to scale back emissions and shut useful resource loops in manufacturing.
Pure-Fiber Parts Coming to BMW Automobiles
One of many suppliers on show, BComp, develops natural-fiber parts that might substitute carbon fiber in future purposes. BMW additionally confirmed an iX3 seat constructed fully 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 night time was theoretical; these have been early-stage options already being examined and evaluated for actual industrial use.
The session set the tone for the subsequent day, after 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 Heart, the place BMW is making ready its workforce for brand 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 going on whereas the manufacturing unit continues operating at full velocity. Greater than 6,500 staff from over 60 nations maintain the road shifting, 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 rapidly EV manufacturing has scaled inside a website initially designed for combustion engines.
The problem now could be making ready the plant for the Neue Klasse, which begins manufacturing in 2026, with out shutting down operations. As a result of the location is situated in the course of Munich and has no room to develop outward, BMW has to rebuild from inside. Round 33 % of the prevailing buildings might be dismantled, and roughly 600,000 tons of fabric have to be eliminated as older buildings come down. On the similar time, BMW is including about 70,000 sq. meters of recent ground area, 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 area on a plot that measures simply 500,000 sq. meters however already accommodates over 620,000 sq. meters of manufacturing space via 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 area, the corporate is finishing up 13 main relocations, shifting tools, logistics routes, and departments into non permanent areas.
The logistics concerned in conserving the plant operational whereas development advances are substantial. Roughly 400 vehicles transfer out and in of the power day by day, transporting particles out and bringing development supplies in. BMW says the brand new buildings will meet an power customary of 40 % of the reference worth, a part of a broader effort to scale back emissions throughout its manufacturing community. General, there are 800 vehicles shifting out and in of the plant each single day, together with vehicles transporting elements or vehicles.
Few automotive vegetation try a metamorphosis 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, supplied an outline that aligned precisely with what we had seen.
“It’s like an open-heart surgical procedure day by day,” she stated. “We’re remodeling this plant whereas we’re producing 1000 vehicles per day. It’s a logistical masterpiece… and that’s the best way we run transformation at BMW — folks, locations, manufacturing programs. We expect all of them collectively.”
She spoke with the form 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 staff — folks whose identities have 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 provide 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 seem like. Her takeaway was easy: “Belief is possibly essentially the most useful forex in these transformative instances.”
Contained in the Expertise Campus: Coaching for a Workforce That Has to Rework Rapidly
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 ability is now the central coaching hub for roughly 40,000 BMW Group staff in Munich, and it displays the size 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 totally different coaching professions and 18 twin research packages. Recruiters instructed us the expertise pipeline has modified considerably up 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 up to now. The goal is not only 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 packages in 20 manufacturing places and branches worldwide, with the most important 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 whole, the corporate estimates about 1,163 trainees are energetic throughout its world Rolls-Royce and BMW Group places.
Contained in the Munich Expertise Campus, the shift in coaching philosophy is straight away seen. Conventional workshop areas sit alongside digital coaching labs, robotics stations, automation programs, 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 check with this as “future expertise” improvement — not simply educating a commerce, however educating staff to navigate expertise that evolves yearly.
BMW says greater than 75,000 staff per 12 months participate in {qualifications} associated to rising fields resembling high-voltage programs, digital manufacturing instruments, and EV-related processes. Greater than 50,000 staff have already accomplished coaching particular to e-mobility. A lot of this work is completed in cooperation with universities, expertise companions, and different industrial firms. Internally, BMW makes use of the Expertise Campus to pilot new educational strategies earlier than pushing them out to different vegetation worldwide.
Robotics and AI: Sensible Instruments Already Embedded within the Manufacturing unit
The ultimate cease of the day, the Robotics and AI Coaching Heart, supplied a view into how digitalization is unfolding inside BMW’s vegetation. As an alternative of the big industrial robots typically related to automotive manufacturing, we noticed collaborative robotic arms being skilled for particular duties — gentle, versatile machines meant to help employees relatively than substitute them. Workers learn to program these models, learn how to troubleshoot, and learn how 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 programs used to investigate ergonomic posture by monitoring the human physique via motion, a way 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 have been demonstrated — instruments that assist human inspectors by catching anomalies the attention might miss.
The constant message was that AI features as an assistant relatively than an authority.
BMW repeatedly stresses that its long-term competitiveness is determined by lifelong studying, and the construction of the Expertise Campus makes that time clear. The corporate just isn’t coaching staff for one job title or one section of the trade. It’s attempting to organize them for a producing panorama that may proceed altering as electrification, software program integration, and round manufacturing reshape the work completed inside BMW’s vegetation.
A Technique That Adapts As an alternative of Predicts
One thread operating via the shows was BMW’s refusal to commit fully to a single technological final result. Horstmeier expressed this plainly throughout a strategic dialogue, acknowledging the uncertainties going through the trade. “We don’t put all eggs in a single basket,” she stated. “Occasions are risky… The conditions for 100% electrical even in Europe are usually not there and won’t be there till the 2030s.”
Her level wasn’t anti-electric. It aligned with what we noticed up to now: factories being redefined so it will possibly deal with new electrical platforms whereas nonetheless supporting combustion-engine strains 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 the complete occasion collectively have been the folks doing the work.
Horstmeier returned up to now repeatedly: “Transformation with our folks is feasible,” she stated earlier within the day.
BMW Traditional: A Have a look at the Artwork Automobiles 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 packages. BMW used the setting to focus on the Artwork Automotive 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 via the historical past of the Artwork Automobiles and defined how this system has advanced alongside the model. Girst introduced two vital items from the gathering: the Alexander Calder Artwork Automotive, the primary automobile created for the sequence in 1975, and Artwork Automotive No. 20, designed by Julie Mehretu and unveiled earlier this 12 months.
Girst emphasised that the Artwork Automotive challenge has by no means been about advertising however about long-term collaborations with artists who reinterpret BMW’s design language via 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 totally 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.
