The Visit to the City of DaimlerChrysler

by Christo Le Roux Lourens

The Mercedes production plant, situated in Stuttgart - the biggest one of many around the world - is truly a city. It covers an area of 2,5 km2, has its own heating-and-power station, fire station, medical staff and hospital, small supermarkets and many cafeterias of which one caters for 11 000 people per day. Astonishingly it can produce up to 2000 brand new custom ordered Mercedes…impressive! DaimlerChrysler is an enormous world wide company which, in the year 2004, employed 384 724 people and achieved revenues of EUR 142,1 billion, probably more than the budget of many African countries.

The morning started off with a guided tour through three of the major production areas. First of which is the area where the steel or aluminum sheets are cut-and-pressed and cut-and-pressed until the desired panel is achieve, all of course done automatically. One Mercedes can have up to 600 of these panel. The power and size of the machines and the extent of the operation is so big that the ground literally shakes.

From here it was over to the Body shop where all the panels are welded or glued or welded and glued together in various ways in continuous lines, run almost completely by computer with a seemingly endless line of robots doing all the work - all automated. To try to describe the magnitude of this operation and the years of combined knowledge and experience that was needed to achieve it will never do it justice, you have to go see it for yourself.

The last part of our tour was through the final assembly area. While not as impressive as the two previous areas it was still something to experience. Here most of the work is done by hand. Pre-assembled units, such as a dashboard unit complete with electronics, GPS and CD player, arrive from different area in the plant or from other companies and are all fitted neatly into place by expert hands. They are then checked to be perfect and, just for good measure, checked again until finally at the end of the line stands a brand new Mercedes. Truly a world class operation.

By now we were all starving and DaimlerChrysler, being the well organised company they are, treated as to the best meal we have had since arriving in Germany. Here we were honoured by a few words from Mr. M Kleinert, head of the SAFRI-chairman's office - a group of German companies whose main objective is to draw the attention of German business and industry to Southern African nations. Prof. Dr. Jürgen E. Schrempp, Chairman of the Board of Management of DaimlerChrysler, is also the chairman of SAFRI which means we as South Africans have a lot to thank DaimlerChrysler for. Incidentally they also sponsored most of the students on the trip and will continue to do so for another ten years.

To end the day off we all went to the Mercedes Benz museum to view over a 100 years of German motor ingenuity. The highlight of which must be the McLearon-Mercedes F1 car, a car and team I enthusiastically support. Another plus was a close look at the new CLS 360, a car I would love to own, all I need now is EUR 90 000… Thank you DaimlerChrysler, we had a great and memorable time.