FACTORY TOUR MERCEDES BENZ
11.01.2017
The Mercedes Benz Factory, located in the small town of Sindelfingen, Germany, is one of the largest Mercedes Benz Factories in the world. We were privileged enough to get an exclusive your of the factory, including the production plant at large for the participants of the Tübingen-South African Programme 2017.
Upon arrival at the factory, we were greeted by Joanne. Joanne is part of the HR department at the plant and she was responsible for organising the tour for us. At the entrance, we saw new car models of the Mercedes Benz brand, including the S-coupé, GLC SUV, C-class, S-class and the Smart car. We were then shown a very informative 10 minute video which took us through the evolution of the Mercedes Benz brand, brief car manufacturing process, different car models and also daily life of employees at the Manufacturing plant.
We were then taken on a tour of the production plant. The tour started with the Tour guide taking us to the car body assembly side of the plant. There, we got ourselves acquainted with the various machinery, robotic systems as well as various other assembly methods used to piece together the outer car shell of the cars. Using state of the art technology and assembly methods, we learnt that Mercedes Benz uses ground-breaking laser welding technology in order to minimise human error and also to weld difficult to reach parts of the car shell.
After this, we were then taken to the Assembly line and final assembly, where we are taught the organisational culture of the factory, the various car specifications and intricate detailing which goes into configuring each Mercedes car model manufactured as well as the input of state-of-the-art technology. Here, we then witnessed the "wedding", which is the joining of the body shell and engine of the car. We were then lastly taken to the quality control area whereby each and every car manufactured is tested to make sure it is of the utmost quality in terms of safety, aesthetics and comfort. This signalled the end of a very interesting two hour tour.
The company was generous enough to offer us a delicious lunch which we all thoroughly enjoyed. This gave us a chance to engage with company staff who were excited to share with us their stories of life within the company and how exciting it is to engage with South African students every year from this programme.
We would like to thank the Mercedes Benz factory, Joanne Dittrich for this wonderful opportunity. Really amazing and life changing!
Simon Chisala Phiri
