BMW 2004 Annual Report Download - page 156

26 A plant takes shape
March 2000. In Munich,preparations for the most ambitious product and market
initiative in the BMW Group’s history enter the decisive phase. More (and, in
particular, new) production capacities are required for more models, additional
variants and higher retail figures. In Munich, a working group begins to sketch
potential sites and parameters for a completely new automobile plant.The proj-
ect’s working title: “Greenfield”.
The targets for this project are extremely demanding from the start. The new
plant is, on the one hand, to handle the complexity – in purely arithmetical
terms – of the 1017 model variants from which today’s customers can put
together their BMW automobile and, on the other hand, to produce this variety
within a very short time. “Maximum flexibility” is thus the most important objec-
tive. Another is international competitiveness, for although this plant is to be
located in Europe, it must compete in global production conditions. The plan-
ners are well aware that these targets can be achieved only with solutions
which have never existed in the automobile industry before.
Summer 2000. When the news spreads that the BMW Group is planning a
new plant, more than 200 applications from municipalities from all over Europe
arrive in Munich within a very short time.They are all examined carefully. Finally,
five potential locations in France, Germany and the Czech Republic are short-
listed.
18 July 2001.The Chairman of the Board of Management at the time,Professor
Joachim Milberg, announces the Company’s decision at a press conference:
a 208-hectare plot to the north of Leipzig has been chosen as the site for
the new BMW plant. Almost exactly in the geographical centre of Germany,
extremely accessible in between the A9 and A14 motorways and in a region
that is also easy to reach from the BMW Group’s existing supplier network.
Located near a city with a great cultural and industrial tradition, whose inhabi-
tants have an above-average level of education, and which offers a high quality
of life, but where the unemployment rate is almost 20 percent.
Immediately after the decision is made, www.bmw-werk-leipzig.de, one of the
five websites that has been prepared as alternative, goes online, and shortly
afterwards a project office opens in Leipzig to handle applications for jobs with
the BMW Group. The “Greenfield” project begins to take shape.
Leipzig as location: a city with a great industrial tradition,
but also with an unemployment rate of almost 20 percent.
August 2001. The first new employee for the Leipzig plant, an apprentice, signs
his contract. It is based on a flexible mix of more than 200 work time models,
which was defined for the plant under the title “BMW formula for work” – an
important condition for the decision in favour of Leipzig. With the “BMW formula