BMW Group Plant Dingolfing, Germany

BMW iFactory - with this initiative, the BMW Group aims to set standards in efficiency & flexibility, sustainability, and intelligent digitalization. The goals that the BMW Group's production network has set itself for 2025 are ambitious - e.g., reducing costs per vehicle by 25% while at the same time significantly improving quality, on-time delivery, and flexibility.

BMW iFactory - lean, green & digital. While lean has been established in the production network of the BMW Group's value-added oriented production system (WPS) for years, the organization and working methods for digitalization must first be established. The division of roles between headquarters and production sites at BMW can be described in simplified terms as follows: headquarters provides the "larger" digital innovations, while the plants develop and implement use cases (naturally also combined with other innovations). This is done together with or in close coordination with headquarters.

In this context, the Dingolfing plant with its 5,200 employees - and assembly in particular - plays a pioneering role within the BMW Group. Many of the use cases encountered in assembly were piloted or even developed there. The principles of the WPS are supported in an exemplary manner because it is not about "technology for technology's sake". This can be seen, for example, in the digital solutions such as Takt.Info or T-Cube, which support the foreman in his daily leadership work on the shop floor. This makes lean leadership on the shop floor even more effective. In addition to the many digital use cases that impressed the jury, e.g., in the fields of analytics, planning/balancing assembly, quality assurance, mobile and predictive maintenance, worker support, automated driving in the plant environment, plant planning or virtual commissioning, it was also important for the award that the Lean DNA was always noticeable. No two worlds, but a fusion of lean and digitalization. The jury is therefore giving the award in the OEM category for the year 2022 to the assembly of the Dingolfing plant.

• Excellent mix of top down and bottom-up approaches
• Lean DNA - various "smaller" improvements from "inside out" with high implementation speed
• Linking of projects to the value stream (no showcases)
• Inspiring collaboration between areas (within the plant, across groups)
• Coherent overall concept (strategy, architecture, connectivity)
• Meaningful support for workers and managers on the shop floor (people are the focus)