BMW Group / Dingolfing Plant

The BMW Group plant in Dingolfing is one of the world’s largest automobile factories and the BMW Group’s largest vehicle plant in Europe. It manufactures 17 different derivatives, with the model range comprising the 4, 5, 7 & 8 Series, and the fully electric BMW iX (as of 2025).

With a transformation roadmap, the plant has been implementing digitization, lean, and automation initiatives in several manufacturing segments since 2021. Two departments submitted a solution from this roadmap as an application for the INDUSTRIE 4.0 AWARD: the body shop team and the paint shop team. This exemplifies how the plant enables its departments to solve highly complex and very diverse challenges.

Example 1: “Digitalization” / Initial situation in the paint shop

• The factory’s paint shop has 136 painting robots and 100 corrosion-protection robots in use across four painting lines.
• The integration of data science, virtualization, and AI, among other things, was intended to increase flexibility, standardization, and cost efficiency in the lines.
• In addition, the work processes in the paint shop have been geared toward efficient resource use for many years. This is continuously optimized with digitization measures.

Example 2: “Automation” / Initial situation in body shop

• Approximately 1,400 body shells are manufactured daily at the plant, each consisting of 500-600 individual parts and over two million add-on parts. There are several thousand weld spots per body.
• Before the project, metal welding studs were transported to the production line and the welding robot via an approximate ten-meter-long plastic hose.
• The movements of the welding robot and the surrounding plastic hose caused significant wear and tear, resulting in correspondingly high maintenance costs and expenses.

Through the transformation roadmap, the management provides a clear action plan and focuses the site on continuous improvement. Accordingly, all roles and responsibilities for implementing the roadmap are clearly defined within the specialist areas and projects. When new initiatives or improvement ideas are added, the plant reviews their benefits and, if implemented, prioritizes them based on urgency and effectiveness. A dedicated communication platform supports and orchestrates this approach across departments.

With this third INDUSTRIE 4.0 AWARD, following the plants in Regensburg (2018) and Steyr (2023), BMW demonstrates how a culture of innovation is exemplarily promoted and implemented in an OEM plant – and how extremely complex transformation paths lead to clear, tangible results thanks to well-thought-out orchestration.

Vehicles from more than 25 series and with 300 special colors receive their exterior appearance on a four-kilometer conveyor line. Quality assurance for a wide variety of variants is a key focus for Industry 4.0 solutions: sensor technology, data analytics, and AI tools are used to meet line-specific KPIs and reduce maintenance costs.
One example of this is the use of AI to monitor the condition and wear of steering air rings on spray heads, for which the plant developed its own software solution and AI assistant. Since the condition of the rings is essential for a good painting result, this highlight contributes to remarkable overall results, as the plant demonstrates. For example, reducing painting time, costs, and wastewater consumption per unit.

A proprietary, patented bolt magazine on the robot simplifies and optimizes the welding process. The award-winning team replaced the plastic hose used to feed the welding bolts during lift-ignition welding with a stationary “magazine”. This magazine is mounted directly on the robot that holds a fixed number of welding bolts. The solution eliminates the need for moving plastic hoses, and the magazines are replaced during scheduled downtime. This significantly reduces unplanned downtime as well as maintenance effort and costs.

The solution also significantly improves cycle times: if, for example, a double-digit number of bolts are welded in 100 seconds when fed through the hose in one application, the magazine solution requires 60 seconds for the same number of bolts. Other results include improved ergonomics for employees and greater flexibility in configuring robot movements. The magazine is universally applicable and can be adapted independently of the equipment manufacturer.