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The three main areas of the factory - the body shop, paint shop, and assembly line - converge on a 'Communications Plaza' where administration, finance and other support staff work.
Apart from the paint shop, which is hermetically sealed behind glass to prevent contamination, there are few physical barriers between workers in Spartanburg. A maintenance technician from body assembly, for example, can bend the ear of a paper-shuffler from the quality department without having to open a door. It's a simple matter of walking off the concrete of the factory floor and onto the carpet which defines the boundary of the Communications Plaza. BMW calls this its 'Internally Focused Design Concept'.
BMW also attempted to remove social as well as physical barriers. Everyone in the place, from BMW Manufacturing Corporation president Al Kinzer to the lowliest member of cleaning staff, wears a corporate uniform jacket bearing only his or her first name.
The lack of any barrier between body shop, assembly line and office area meant special attention had to be paid to noise levels. BMW engineers adapted quiet ski-lift technology for the overhead conveyors which carry completed bodies from body shop to assembly line.
The level of automation in the factory is deliberately low. While BMW's claim that this helps make the plant more flexible is undoubtedly true, it must also be a consequence of the lower-than-German pay rates.
Spartanburg may be conceptually courageous, but its start-up has been far from trouble-free. The first car made there, a 318i sedan, was completed in September '94. But spooling the US$400 million plant up to its 90,000 units per year capacity has been a glacially slow process. This is, at least in part, because meeting quality standards has proved problemmatic.
John Carey
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The transcription of Not So Fast, 007, an article that appeared in the January 1996 issue of Wheels, Australia's premier automotive magazine, was specifically authorized for upload to this site by the Editor, Angus MacKenzie, and the article's author, Peter Robinson. A copy of the file was obtained for release here from the transcriber to Miataville, section 15 of CompuServe's Automobile Forum. Authorization for reproduction in other locations, electronic or otherwise, must not be assumed and must be independently sought, if desired, in writing from Wheels.