07:59 16-11-2025

How BMW is rebuilding its Munich plant for the Neue Klasse

BMW opens its Munich plant to show a live rebuild for the Neue Klasse: AI-assisted robotics, new 3-level halls, and a Talent Campus retraining 40,000 staff.

BMW opened the doors of its Munich plant and training centers to show how the company is gearing up for the Neue Klasse era. The centerpiece of the overhaul is unfolding inside a live factory: a third of the old buildings are coming down, 600,000 tons of material are being hauled away, and new three-level halls are rising literally around running production lines. As many as 800 trucks roll through the site each day, yet the plant still turns out about a thousand cars daily.

Management likens the effort to performing open-heart surgery. Teams are being reassigned, equipment repositioned, and logistics routes rewritten on the fly. The emphasis, however, stays on people. Shutting the engine shop required retraining 1,200 specialists, each given an individualized path into the new processes.

The next stop is the Talent Campus, built on the former engine-plant grounds. It trains 40,000 employees, from VR practice and hands-on work with robots to modules on electrification. BMW is investing more than one billion euros in education and brings in thousands of trainees each year through dual programs.

Inside the robotics training center, the company shows how AI helps optimize workstations and spot defects—kept firmly as a tool rather than a substitute for humans. The message is clear: technology is there to augment, not to displace.

This kind of flexibility leaves BMW among the industry’s best prepared, and the human factor remains central to the transformation. It reads less like a slogan and more like the way the company intends to run the change.