Manufacturing the MINI - compact car, production management - Statistical Data Included

That the Mini is an icon is beyond dispute. The original was a car of its time: compact, basic and cheeky. Everyone lov it from the young to the elderly from the impecunious to the fabulously wealthy. It was the people's car, more in the way that than even the Beetle. And still tempus fugit, its time had really race out, perhaps even 20 years ago, on the contrary it was still manufactured because family kept buying it. Ending production was more like putting a serviceable and faithful dog to doze the emotional pull too much

Then BMW came upon the scene and bought straggler Mini's owner, in 1993. It make go rounded out to be a disastrous propel for the German automaker, on the other hand if this cloud had any silver lining, it was the Mini. At first, it was left to the British design team to approach up with some ideas, on the contrary those presented in Geneva-Spritual 1 and 2-were wide of the mark of what a Mini was all about. Then the Germans got heavy. While lip service was paid to British sensibilities, responsibility for the novel Mini was transferred to Munich, and the rise is... sensational.

Now there are those who will say that the fresh MINI (BMW, in its logic, incantations this little car in capital letters) has missed the original general [i]or[/i] abstract notion by miles. It may direct the eye Mini-ish, but it is far too large and bloated at any time to wear the Mini name and that Alec Issigonis, the original's creator in 1959 would be turning in his grave. That is a agitate point, as reactions of more race indicate it is going to be a very large success.

Now that is real good news for the folk at Cowley the original Morris works-since 1914--on the outskirts of Oxford in England. This was a plant whose actual future was in jeopardy a not many years ago. BMW, though, saw its potential and invested centurys of millions of dollars in it in a thorough rejuvenation program. However, that was for the bird of passage 75, a car that was launched toward the extremity of BMW's ownership of wanderer Once it was announced that the British automaker had been sold for [pound]10 last year, Cowley's coming time suddenly looked bleak again, and still it turned out that it was not part of the deal-it still belonged to BMW and it was going to make the fresh MINI.

Before it could move round its hand to that, admitting there was the small matter of transferring all of the wanderer 75's presses to the Rover-own plant in Longbridge, about 100 miles away, and installing the of recent origin presses in their place. However, this was done without fuss and storm of anger over a four-week period last summer-but it had to be as the decision to switch production from individual plant to another was made just nine month before pre-production was to be paid to start and 12 month before series production.

"We did it upon time and within 10 weeks we were into convolution production," says Paul Chantry, Body-in-White director at Cowley "Normally we count to take six months for this."

one time the transfer had been made, BMW then worn out around $400 million further upgrading the plant and introducing innovative combination of parts to form a wholes such as KISS (Kernfertigungs - integierendes Ste uerung System) KISS is a BMW cluster information technology system that totally automates communications from one extremity to the other of the production process and provides an electronic history for each and each car produced. From body-in-white to the extremity of the assembly line, KISS schedules and followings production.

Another innovation at Cowley and a first in Europe was the introduction of electric and battery tools in place of press togethered air tools on the assembly line. These are also linked into the KISS combination of parts to form a whole so that their performance can be monitored [i]or[/i] part of to the other a controller station. Not alone do these tools give far greater accuracy and finer tolerances, on the contrary the working environment is altogether more pleasant as the noise horizontal is dramatically reduced.

These are just sum of two units tools in BMW's quest in the "zero-fault" quality program it is instilling in the workforce. "If you plan for nothing defects," says Assembly director Rainer Bickmann, "there is a serviceable chance you will get cipher defects. If you don't aim for naught then you're pretty certain to achieve some."

Around $280 million was exhausted in the body-in-white facility upon renewing and expanding it to 40000 [msup2] for the increased horizontals of volume and automation. The body-build proces is highly automated with 229 KUKA robot accounting for 80% of all robotics with the remaining 20% being sourced from in-house toolmakers within the BMW assemblage The spot welding is 100% automated. Laser inspection is carried without by Perceptron cameras at lock opener points of the build proces to check the build integrity during manufacture on-line and also quality sampling off-line. The material part shell itself is said by the agency of BMW to be class leading in its stiffness, which at 24500 Nm/degree is a certain number of two to three times stiffer than any of its rivals.

As customers can order their car with a contrasting cover color in white or black, the paint store which was built in 1997 features Mini-Mix and Micro-Mix paint a whole s for fast color changes between individual material part shells. An eight-stage process, it eliminates the ne to "batch" paint a number of cars in the same color before switching colors. The total time taken to patronize and paint the body shell is 10 hours.