Word: carred
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...ditched Rover in 2000. Production has increased steadily, and profits are buoyant. Pretax earnings last year rose 25%, to $5.5 billion, despite the soaring cost of raw materials and the strong euro. It has easily outpaced its historic rival, Mercedes (part of DaimlerChrysler), to become the leading premium-car brand. BMW is pushing a worldwide expansion. This spring it opened an assembly plant in India, and the company is building out a plant in Spartanburg, S.C., as part of its strategy to be less vulnerable to foreign-exchange fluctuations...
Robots do most of the work in the body shop, welding, riveting and bonding hundreds of components together. Robots also apply the four layers of water-based paint to each car. But it's on the assembly line that BMW differentiates itself from even its Japanese rivals. To be able to customize each car requires highly sophisticated logistics. Workers stationed at regular intervals on the line reach back for components in wire baskets that have been rigorously sorted into the right sequence. The complexity is visible to the naked eye: halfway along the line, just past the section where car...
...degree of customization that is required means BMW isn't as ruthlessly efficient as Toyota in some respects, including the number of cars produced per worker per day. But there's a trade-off. "BMW is not prepared to sacrifice its ability to give consumers the car they want. The alternative would be reduced costs but not the ability to charge a premium for customized cars," says Garel Rhys, an auto-industry expert at Cardiff University. In the end, he says, BMW's marginal revenue from customization is higher than the marginal cost advantage it gives...
Putting BMW on a more efficient footing at home has enabled it to expand its product line in all directions. Over the past decade, it has evolved from a group with six model families--with the 3-, 5- and 7-series cars accounting for the vast majority of sales--to one with 11 model families grouped in three distinct brands, BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce. Three new model families are in the works, including a luxury sports car. The Mini, a remnant of the otherwise disastrous 1994 Rover acquisition, has far exceeded all expectations, and BMW is expanding its production...
...formerly BMW's chief economist, says the idea behind the failed Rover deal--to turn the firm into a two-brand company, one for the mass market and one a premium brand--was a smart one, since it would have enabled BMW to spread the huge cost of new-car development over a far bigger group. "BMW's main weakness is that life is getting ever narrower in the premium segment, and it needs volume growth. I'm not sure where it can get it from," Becker says. But other analysts such as Cardiff's Rhys reckon that...