Building Sport-Utes and Sports Cars - BMW plans to expand capacity at South Carolina plant - Brief Article

Automotive Industries, Feb, 2000 by Lindsay Brooke

BMW's South Carolina plant doubles capacity as it adds the new X5 SUV to a growing product mix.

BMW's manufacturing strategy for North America recently began its second growth phase with the launch of the 2000 X5. Code-named E53, the automaker's first sport-utility vehicle zipped from concept approval to production in 35 months, a company record. It brings with it a $650 million expansion of the Greer, S.C., plant that nearly doubles the facility's size to 2.1 million sq. ft.

Most importantly, the X5 expansion also doubles the plant's capacity, giving BMW the ability to build slightly over 100,000 vehicles in the U.S. annually.

"We've proved this plant with over 204,000 Z3s built here (total)," says Dieter Lauterwasser, vice president of Greer's body and paint shops and a veteran of BMW plants in Germany and South Africa. "Now we can produce multiple vehicle types under one roof. And we can alter the production mix to better satisfy market demand"

The plant expansion installed new production lines in the body and assembly shops dedicated to the larger X5. It shares the plant's paint shop along with the smaller sports cars.

The addition of the separate X5 body shop means that the U.S. plant now has the flexibility to build any vehicle in BMW's automobile range, from the 3-Series (which was used for early pilot production) to the 7-Series. But for the near term, the focus is on satisfying demand for the sporty X5, particularly in the track-hungry U.S.

"The sport-utility market will be highly segmented within five years," predicts Dr. Helmut Panke, member of the board for Finance, BMW AG. "The mammoth SUVs will disappear," he says, with a grin and more than a little sarcasm toward the domestics' ever-larger, pickup truck-based utes. He says they will give way to "crossover" all-wheel-drive vehicles that share car and truck attributes.

Thus the X5, whose main competitors will be the Lexus LX 450 and RX 300, as well as Honda's upcoming Acura SUV. Like the BMW, the RX 300 and Acura also have unibody architecture and more car-like ride and handling than most American pickup truck-based SUVs.

Sixty percent of the X5's projected 65,000-unit annual production in the 2000 model year will go to North America. The remaining 40 percent are for export, explains Carl Flesher, a communications vice president at the plant. The X5's debut comes when Z3 and M-Coupe production is falling. Daily output of those two sports cars is 200 vehicles, down from a 250/day peak in 1998. The M-Coupe accounts for 10 percent of the mix.

Plant Launch Goals

Achieving high product quality at launch, rather than through a traditional protracted launch curve, was a major mission of the E53 program. BMW officials aim to avoid the nagging quality problems that hounded Mercedes when it launched the M-Class in Alabama a few years ago.

Like Mercedes, BMW brought a global supply network, including tooling vendors, into the X5 development process early. However, the X5 uses far fewer supplier-built modules, which critics blame for some of the Mercedes' quality woes. And none of the BMW modules are sub-assembled in the Greer plant, unlike the Mercedes operation.

Some notable X5 modules are the front and rear axle/suspension systems, built by ZF's Lemfoerder unit; the Lear seats, and Zeuna Staerker USA exhaust systems. All arrive just-in-time from the suppliers' local facilities.

"Modular supply doesn't always make sense, and we'll only use it where it does," asserts Brenda Cox, purchasing chief for electrical/electronic systems.

Another program goal was keeping the X5's greater build complexity to a minimum during the launch phase. Initial production vehicles offer only a 4.4L gasoline V-8, five-speed automatic, left-hand drive, sunroofs and/or roof racks, and just three unique paint colors. The X5 has 9,000 total part numbers, versus 6,000 on a typical Z3, and it requires double the assembly time per vehicle.

Customers will eventually get the higher content that brings greater profits for BMW, but it will be added in stages to ensure quality. Next spring, the vehicle will add a 3.0L gasoline inline six-cylinder and 5-speed manual transmission, and seven-color paint palette. Right-hand drive comes in the fall. A 3.0L diesel inline-six model is destined for Europe in late 2000.

Highly Automated Body Shop

Another quality-driven target of the E53 program was to boost body shop automation, but keep the shop as flexible as possible. BMW's body shop partner is Nothelfer GmbH, a division of Thyssen. It supplied the entire X5 body line, which is 80 percent automated. One hundred robots and related tooling are arranged in semi-cell fashion for easy reconfiguration.

"The threshold of automated welding investment is determined by volume," Lauterwasser notes, "and at our initial capacity plan for X5 agility is the key. Our 20 percent mix of manual stations gives us plenty of `flex' to be able to introduce new future technologies, if needed."

The X5 is BMW's first all-digital vehicle. It was designed exclusively "in the tube," using the company's CATIA computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing network. Engineers in Germany configured the tooling, programmed the robots then ran the entire body shop in the computer before a single piece of equipment was uncrated at the plant. When the line was actually run for the first time, only four weld points had to be changed in the entire process. "The tooling prove-out was nearly identical to the CATIA simulation," recalls Lauterwasser.