A Visit to BMW Welt, Munich

After the American Century

As part of the research for my forthcoming book on the assembly line (MIT Press, 2013), I have visited several factories. Here is my account of a visit to one of them.

It costs €8 to see the BMW plant in Munich, and it is necessary to sign up in advance^. There is room for only two groups of 25 people each hour, one with an English guide. In contrast, the magnificent show room where the tours start, a vast building called “BMW Welt,” attracts much larger crowds. It is a temple where enthusiasts can see all the latest models, pose in the driver’s seat, look at exhibits about how (and of what materials) the car is made, sit on a BMW motorcycle, or go into the gift shop to purchase BMW T-shirts, mugs, jackets, key-chains, model cars, and much more. In the bookstore on the mezzanine level they can also buy books about automobiles, design, and the company history. The building is about consumption and pride of ownership. Its sinuous lines and the profusion of displays create the feeling that one is in a high-end shopping complex. A distinguished stream of customers constantly arrives, to be welcomed and ushered  into elevators to higher floors inaccessible to ordinary visitors. Most BMW buyers enjoy a fine lounge and restaurant where they await the arrival of their new car. A select few go to a more exclusive redoubt of luxury, so rarified that most of those who serve the thronging clientele have never seen it. Most tourists are not buyers. But if they ascend to the second level, seven meters about the ground floor, they can look across at the exclusive area where immaculate cars are driven in and delivered to new owners, who drive down a ramp that circles out into the city traffic. 

BMW Welt

The factory tour lasted two hours and covered three kilometers. Most of the time we walked on concrete floors and metal bridges, surfaces that punish the arches, the knees and the lower back. Fifty years ago such a factory tour would have been noisier and grittier, and one would have sympathized with the workers caught up in that environment every day. But today robots do much of the work. Looking a bit like giant orange insects, they move deliberately, pausing with some delicacy near the end of each maneuver, as sensors guide their pincers to just the right position. First, in the stamping plant they guide sheets of steel into a succession of enormous machines that crunch down over sheets of flat steel transforming it into the hood or roof or trunk, or perhaps a left or right door. In each case, before the die slams down on the smooth steel, the metal is sprayed with a mist of oil to lubricate the process. The massive first stamping creates the basic form, which is refined and completed in the smaller stampings that follow, as ends are trimmed or folded, small holes added, and further indentations made. In 1913 several workers were needed to feed blanks into stamping machines, take out the results, and send them on to the next machine. A century later all this work is done by machines, with only a few people keeping an eye on the process. Our guide declares this technological unemployment is just as well, for the work is boring and yet dangerous, given the tremendous force of the stamping machines. It is endlessly repetitive and also hard on the ears. Some skilled workers are needed because the dies in the machines must be changed at times to make spare parts for older models. A model is usually made for seven years, but after that BMW produces parts for another decade. 

The stamped parts are next transported, automatically, to the body assembly, where the left and right door frames are attached to the car’s floor. Then a roof is added, followed by smaller parts and then the doors. In many cases the stamped panels are first fixed in place with a fast-drying glue that also functions as a thin elastic layer that will cushion shocks and improve the car’s ride. The metal parts are then welded together, again by giant orange robots, eight of them working at once in an almost silent, rapid sequence that has been choreographed and fine-tuned. Hardly a worker has touched it yet, but the welded parts have become a car body, still without wheels, windows, seats, or drive train. 

Before these can be added, the bodies pass on to the paint building, where we trudged after our guide over steel bridges through strange smelling passageways. We had glimpses of machinery at times, and heard an occasional hiss or gurgling sound, until we emerged into a large white room with soft seats where we gladly sat for a five-minute lecture on the steps involved in painting a car. One might imagine that the process was like painting the outside of a house, with a primer and one or two coats of good paint, and indeed that is exactly what Ford did in 1913. Each coat then needed  hours to dry before the next one was applied.  But it was hardly so time-consuming in 2011, even though there are more layers. First, all the residual oil and any dirt are zealously washed off the bodies. Then they are baptized in a thick undercoat, through a total immersion of the whole body in a large pool of paint, which is then pulled up by a robot to drip off before passing through a heating shed, where it is first baked in infrared heat at 150 degrees C, driving off all the liquid in the paint, and then furiously blown over by artificial winds. 

This is just the beginning, as four more layers will be applied, including one that is a bit rubbery, to make the surface more resistant to flying gravel or hailstones. The next to last layers are the paint proper that give the car its distinctive color. Ninety percent of all BMW buyers want their vehicle to be black, silver, or white. The other eleven colors are seldom used. New avatars of the same orange robots, made in Augsburg just an hour away from the plant, apply these layers. They spray the paint evenly, and digital cameras record the results. During each new round of coatings the car is given an electrical charge that attracts the tiny droplets to its surface. Not much paint sails wide of the mark, but any waste falls into a continuously rushing stream, a mini-Niagara under each painting station. The paint is extracted from the water, which is reused. Indeed, the water usage of the BMW plant has been reduced 90 percent in recent decades.

Once the BMW bodies have been repeatedly painted and baked, they pass into a room with six levels of shelves on each side where they are carefully stored. In the passageway between the shelves a machine that is both an elevator and a powerful robot lifts one body at a time, lowers it to ground level and sends it on its way to the final assembly plant. More than half of the shelf space is empty, for the factory makes only cars that have been ordered. It produces each body just in time for final assembly.

The guide next takes us to the other great tributary stream to the final assembly, the engine manufacturing plant. Most of the engines made here are powerful 4 cylinder 2.0 liter affairs that get 16 kilometers to the liter (or more than 30 mpg). Half the labor that goes into them is human, half robotic. The V8 engine for larger BMWs is 80% made by human beings, and the top of the line engine for the Rolls Royce is 100% man-made. (To be precise, 95% of the workers at the Munich BMW plant are men, and the few women are clustered in certain jobs.) In the motor plant the guide does not show us the casting of engine blocks or their precision drilling. Once the work of extremely skilled labor, this too has been progressively automated. Already in 1913 Ford had a purpose built machine that simultaneously drilled forty-five holes in an engine block, from four directions. A century later, the early stages of engine production have few workers. We see obviously skilled men building parts into these blocks as they pass down the line. Inspections also are continuous, until motors are complete and they can be harnessed to the drive train. 

At this point the two streams of work come together. The bodies meet the engine and drive trains they are destined to mate with, or “marry” as the workers put it. The bodies gently fall down as the engines rise up, with a brief pause before the last centimeters of drop and the two become one.  Final assembly can then begin. This part of automobile production still attracts the most public attention, as hundreds of parts and pre-assembled units like the dashboard are put in, typically with no more than a minute for each operation. Painting, by comparison, is repetitive and not as interesting to watch, and not even shown on many assembly line tours. Final assembly is much faster. One man unbundles and lays out a car’s electrical wiring and secures it in position, and a moment later another worker is covering the wires and the entire bottom of the car with a perfectly cut felt-like layer. Visitors walk much faster than the crawling line, and to them each task seems to take considerably less than a minute. One man with the help of a robot lifts and puts in the dashboard. The back and front seats, the emergency brake, the headlights and many small details are quickly and expertly installed. The windshield goes in. In half an hour one has traversed much of the line, and the cars are nearing completion. The doors, earlier removed to allow easier access to the interior, are reinstalled. At the end of the line some gasoline is pumped in, and each car is started, tested, and driven out of the factory. 

The BMW tour in Munich is by no means unusual. The industrial tourist can visit similar factories in all parts of the world. The newest are often designed as tourist sites. Visitors have been coming to see such marvels of assembly since Ford's managers first created the line in 1913. For a century, the public has remained enchanted. When I visited BMW the tours were sold out, but the factory's  “romance of production” was less central to the public than the “romance of consumption” in the showroom. In both places the car was treated as an almost enchanted “thing in itself,” an icon of modernity. For many it has become the ultimate consumer product, especially because now the assembly line can produce individualized automobiles, made to the consumer’s specifications. Henry Ford made his cars identical. But today, using the computer to keep track of the entire process from ordering to delivery, the assembly line produces individualized objects. Paradoxically, an assembly line with many robots and far fewer workers than in 1913 makes a more highly differentiated line of automobiles.

See also the blog on America's Assembly Line

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BRIC Nations Driving Global Warming

After the American Century

I recently spent two days at the University of Michigan, attending a conference dealing with sustainability and the US / China relationship. My brief was to deliver a plenary lecture on the history of US energy use, and what that history suggests about the future.

The background for this discussion is the major shift in the sources of pollution that has taken place during the previous five years. In c. 2006 the United States released more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other country. Since then the US has reduced its carbon footprint, and at the same time its total energy use has stopped growing. In contrast, China's economy has been growing at a rate of 9 or 10% every year, and its energy use has shot well beyond the US level. In fact, China alone released more CO2 last year than the United States, Germany, and the UK combined.

When one adds the CO2 from Brazil, Russia, and India, the other "BRIC" nations, the pollution balance shifts even more dramatically. These four emerging economies taken together are demanding more and more energy and they are satisfying this demand mostly through the older polluting technologies. Alternative energies receive lip service. Indeed, the many Chinese delegates to the meeting in Michigan kept repeating that the pollution was created to manufacture things for the West, and therefore the CO2 releases should not be counted against China. 

This is a curious argument. Chinese factories choose to be highly polluting of their own water and soil in order to keep prices down, a subject that was dealt with at the conference. These factories also choose to pay workers poorly in order to keep prices down, a topic that however was scarcely mentioned. Exploiting their own land, air, people, and energy resources in a short-sighted manner, the Chinese are making  a good deal of money. But the CO2 somehow, they think, is not their responsibility.

In contrast, almost all the large western economies have managed to reduce their CO2 levels in the last decade. One must admit that they start from an entirely different position. Per capita, Americans, Germans, and Brits all use far more energy than the average Chinese and enormously more than the average Indian. Starting from a position of excessive energy use, the West can cut back largely by adopting new technologies that are more efficient and less polluting. 

The overall trend is worrisome. The BRIC national economies are growing rapidly, and their CO2 emissions are keeping pace. This is not a sustainable situation. Nor is it a necessary situation.

I explained why in my lecture. Drawing on my  Consuming Power, I briefly summarized the previous American energy regimes from colonial times to the present: muscle power, water power, steam power, electrical power, gas and oil, and the never entirely realized nuclear regime. 

I then drew several conclusions. 

First, that the US has had little or no historical experience with shortages. Shifts in energy use were driven by consumer demands for more rather than the need to replace disappearing sources. 

Second, that since c. 1820 there have been new energy regimes roughly every 40 years. This strongly suggests that the shift to alternative energies will also take four decades, and that it will not entirely replace but rather supplement previous energy sources. 

Third, statistics show that since c. 1940 the largest growth in energy use in the US has been in the consumer sector. Industry has been much better at curbing its appetites. The good news is, that, based on studies of best practices - i.e. using existing technologies - the US could cut its total energy use by 50%. This would not entail any hardships or major changes in lifestyle. Rather, this would mean that per capita US energy use fell to the level of Germany or Denmark. The existing technologies include improved housing insulation and heat exchangers, already in use in Germany, that come close to eliminating the need for most domestic heating or cooling. Heat pumps, passive solar, solar panels, geothermal, burning waste, and wind power together provide a good mix of alternatives. Utilized together with pumped storage of hydro power, they eliminate the bogus argument raised by the oil, gas, and coal companies, who claim that alternative energies cannot provide energy around the clock, because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow.

Fourth, half of the reduced US energy demand could be met though a mix of alternative energies, including far more than wind and solar power. Again, new technologies are not necessary. What we already have is sufficient to achieve this result. But note that the cost of solar power has been steadily falling, at a rate that economist Paul Krugman estimates to be 7% every year.

In other words, rather than set a goal of unchanged total use, of which 25% is to be alternative energy, I firmly believe that the US goal should be to reduce its energy consumption by half and satisfy the  remaining energy demand by using alternative energies. Moreover, the BRIC nations could do the same thing. Rather than adopt old-fashioned technologies, such as coal-fired electrical plants, they could move directly toward the sustainable goal. Their models should be Denmark and Germany. They should not measure themselves against the US, whose energy use is indefensible and unsustainable. Indeed, there is some evidence that the Chinese have begun to understand this more quickly than the US itself. Certainly China has moved to be a global leader in solar energy.

The fundamental problem of excessive energy use is not technological, but social and political.

Obama on the World Stage

After the American Century


Obama stood on the world stage for the first time in Berlin, and judging by the crowd's reaction, he was a great success. The talking heads on screen afterward tried to find critical things to say, which is their job. But rather than trying to summarize their remarks, let us review the main points.

1. Obama came out with no one to introduce him. There was no build up or fan-fare, no drum rolls. He simply came out. This is a humble way to present yourself, without any of the trappings of a head of state.

2. Obama connected his remarks at many points with German history and experiece, giving a speech that obviously was created for this specific time and place. I may have missed something, but I believe that we are still waiting for John McCain to give a major speech anywhere on any subject.

3. Obama was not merely throwing pretty remarks at the Germans. He reminded them that some of the terrorists who struck on 9/11 had been students in Hamburg, but he did this in such a skillful way that it did not rouse commentary afterwards, nor apparently cause offense. Obama's point was that the globalized world demands unified action, that borders - walls - are now dysfunctional. He also called on Germany to contribute to the military effort in Afghanistan. This is not such a popular position in that country.

4. Obama did not make specific policy proposals, as I hoped he might (see the last blog). But in retrospect, I can see that getting specific is perhaps inappropriate at this stage, when he is still a candidate. So he called for an end to torture, but did not mention Guantanamo. He called for unified actions against global warming, and praised the German efforts in this regard, but he did not get into details. He asked for a united effort against drugs, terrorism, and racism. Again, I can see that the commentators would have jumped on him for acting like the head of state had he been too detailed about any of these matters. This speech was about vision, not the details of implementation.

5. There were some fine rhetorical passages in the speech, but it does not appear that there is one line that is destined for quotation in years to come. But the general level of the speech was high, far higher than anything either of the Bush presidents ever attained, and better than what John McCain can muster.

When he was finished, Obama left the podium as simply as he arrived there. There was no music or follow-up speaker. He went down to shake hands with people in the front of the crowd. Overall, he showed that he has the stature and the charisma needed to recover the American image abroad. When was the last time 200,000 people turned out anywhere abroad to hear an American leader speak? Actually, the largest crowd to hear any candidate speak during the primaries was 75,000, for Obama in Oregon. I do not recall anything like it for many years. One has to go back to Reagan to find an equivalent moment.


The full text of Obama's speech can be found on CNN

What Obama Should Say in Berlin

After the American Century

Tonight Obama will address a large outdoor crowd in Berlin. No one seems to know how many will come to hear him, but estimates range as high as one million. If the weather is good, that is distinctly possible. So far on this journey Obama has done exceedingly well, apparently making a particularly positive impression in Iraq and Jordan, yet solidifying his support for Israel at the same time. The most difficult part of his trip might seem to be over, since Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel are all troubled nations that present severe foreign policy problems.

By comparison, Germany, France, and Great Britain might look easy. But they are not necessary a doddle. Some of the Germans are prickly about becoming a backdrop to the American campaign, including Angela Merkel. It is thus essential that Obama not appear to be campaigning, that he address his German audience first, and deliver only a good sound bite for the Americans. Who remembers what else John F. Kennedy said in Berlin besides "Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner"? (An uncharitable and perhaps slightly inaccurate translation of this remark into Danish would read ... the proudest boast is that "I am a donut.") So for the Americans, all he needs is a pithy one-liner, preferably followed by a roar of cheering and applause. For the Europeans, in contrast, there needs to be some substance.

What might Obama say? He has 300 foreign policy advisors and a clever staff, so they have assuredly thought of more things than I can this morning, but here is a short list of possibilities, other than the obvious need to say thank you for the opportunity to come and a few words about the strong ties between the two nations, etc etc. In any case, this is what I think Obama ought to say. It is a bit tricky for him, because he must seem to speak as a powerful Senator, representing the Democratic Party, and not as a presidential candidate.

(1) The EU has been a tremendous economic success. It is a tribute to earlier American foreign policy, of the sort that needs to be recovered. That foreign policy promoted dialogue, peaceful economic development, and the dismantaling of militaristic nationalism. A region plagued by major wars for hundreds of years until 1945 has now been at peace for more than 60 years. in another generation, no one will be alive that personally remembers World War II. The EU is therefore a model for the rest of the world, and the proudest boast of a Berliner today is that he or she is a citizen of the EU. [He did say much of this, in fact.]

(2) The US needs to listen more to its allies. It should have listened to Germany on Iraq. It needs to be a partner, not an overbearing leader. [Of these three sentences, he said one and three, more or less, but did not specifically mention German opposition to the Iraq invasion.]

(3) The base in Guantanamo should be closed. Five previous secretaries of state, Republicans and Democrats, have called for it to be shut down, and John McCain, as a former prisoner of war, is no fan of the Cuban base either. This would also be popular with the German audience. [He did call for an end to torture, but did not specifcally mention Gauntanamo.]

(4) The US needs to work with the EU to deal with global warming, where the Bush Administration has obstructed progress. Germany is an inspiring example of what can be done with alternative energy, as it has some of the world's largest wind farms and solar arrays. If a northern nation with often cloudy weather can do so much, clearly the US can do even more in the arid but sunny West and the windy Great Plains. (He might mention Al Gore's 10 year plan, but probably he will not do so explicitly.) [He did say much of this.]

(5) The educational exchanges between Europe and America are important and need to be strengthened. Under the Bush Administration the landmark Fulbright Program has been cut back. It should be given far more funding and added scope. Educational exchanges not only strengthen the cultural bonds between our continents, they lead to the synergies of innovation. [He said nothing about this.]

(6) The EU and the US must stand firmly together in confronting global terrorism. At the same time, they must use economic assistance and cultural programs to create a better context for dialogue. The common goal must be to allow a multicultural world to live in peace. [These ideas were central to his speech.]

I am not predicting he will say any of these things, but he ought to. We will see. [Many of the themes mentioned here were in the speech, but of course I did not attempt to imagine the metaphors he might use. The dominant image was that of breaking down walls, which made German historical experience a symbol of hope. This is not always the lesson drawn from German history, and it made the crowd feel good.]

Obama, The Cold War, Brandenburg Gate

After the American Century

At the end of this month Senator Obama will make a brief trip to Europe. No doubt the purpose of the journey is to bolster his international credentials, by standing in historic places and making historic looking handshakes. During the fall he can casually refer to his "good friends" Gorden and Angela. All outsider candidates do something similar, and apparently it does have some political value to the candidates.

The Germans have become a bit prickly about Obama's giving a speech at the Brandenburg Gate on July 24. Some rather prominent politicians there have said that the young Senator from Illinois did not do anything in particular for Germany during the Cold War. This will likely be true for all future US presidential candidates, however, because time is moving on. A candidate who is 50 in the next election (2012), for example, was born in 1962, and so was under 30 when the Berlin Wall came down. Candidates who were in power during the Cold War are going to disappear. Put another way, the Cold War is fading away, and the Germans might consider how to keep the memory of that confrontation alive. By asking to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama is not only positioning himself in the current campaign, he is also proclaiming a valued historical relationship.

It may be that Angela Merkel's origins in former East Germany are inseparable from her reluctance to see Obama stand where Kennedy and Reagan stood before him. But for Obama, who wants Americans to find ways to reunite, to stop being Red States and Blue States, it is hard to think of a better symbol for transcending differences and for the power of dialogue instead of bullets. Merket might find it "odd", to use her word, that Obama speaks there, but what would be a more appropriate place?

The Cold War ended without a shot being fired as the Wall came down. Quite a contrast with the Bush strategy in Iraq. Senator Obama wants to emphasize that he has a different approach to foreign affairs. The German Government refused to support Bush's invasion of Iraq, as did Senator Obama.

Obama appears to be popular among the German people, moreover, and if this event comes off, it might not just look historic, it might become so.

Christmas and Americanization

Traditionally, we try to push aside gloom and doubts to celebrate Christmas. I sing in a choir, and we have done our part of spreading good cheer, with no less than four concerts during the past two weeks. The music chosen is a good index to the content of the services. The text for most of the hymns comes in fairly direct fashion from the New Testament, whether in Danish, English, or Latin. Yes, Latin is still a living language when it comes to ecclesiastical affairs. We have a work by Palestrina in Latin, for example, and one work with a text in delightfully garbled Old English mixed up with Latin phrases. German hymns are noticeably absent from the repertoire of the choirs I know, and it seems likely that this is an effect of World War II. Occupation did not endear the Germans to the Danes, who frequently perform Handel's Messiah, in English of course, while a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio is far more rare.

The prominence of English should not be mistaken for Americanization, as the pieces chosen by most choirs are from British composers. In the case of the Odense Motet Kor, which I sing with, the earliest British work is by William Byrd, in a series that ends with Benjamin Brittain, John Carter, and Vaughn Williams. American Christmas music, as experienced in Denmark, belongs on the street or the department store, where I hear Bing Crosby croon about that white Christmas we seldom have here and numerous versions of Rudolf. So, the uplifting religious sounds are English, inspired in good part by Cambridge University traditions, while the bouncy and sentimental tunes are American, much the same as one might hear in the US.

The most powerful musical tradition, however, remains Danish. A whole host of songs, both religious and secular, have been composed over the centuries. Some of these melodies seem to me, at least, to be drawn from abroad and reworked into Danish with a new text, but if so they have been thoroughly assimilated. Virtually all Danes seem to know this musical tradition, and on December 24 they will be singing with enthusiasm around their Christmas trees, which are covered with flickering candles - not electric bulbs. These little fires all over a tree that is rapidly drying out are a definite fire hazard, but consider that most families insist on dancing around the tree, with many chances to brush against the limbs and set them waving. And note that some (well, many) of the adults are not really dancing but more staggering around the tree after eating and especially drinking quite a lot, and you have the recipe for conflagration. Yet in fact, I have never seen an accident, which may prove that a higher power is benevolently looking down on the giddy proceedings. Just in case, the Danish family typically has a bucket of water at the ready.

For anyone out there who thinks that Americanization is washing over the world with little resistance, Danish Christmas suggests otherwise. The songs are European, the mountain of protein on the table is usually NOT a turkey, but far more likely a duck, a goose, or pork. And the rituals of the day are all local traditions, too. For example, after the family circles the tree for a while, the youngest child leads them in a line-dance through the entire house. And the presents are usually opened not on the 25th, but after dinner on the 24th. In fact, the Danes love Christmas so much they have an extra dinner on the 23rd. They give it a name - "Little Christmas Eve" - and consider it to be almost as sacred to family life as the following night.

Finally, what about the presents under the tree? Some of them are American, of course, and these are often digital, whether computer software, DVDs of Hollywood films, or a new Ipod. But while a survey would be required to confirm my hunch, I strongly suspect that Christmas is a time of patriotic giving. Danish books and music seem prominent in the store windows, and many presents are expensive, high-quality examples of Danish design. To put this another way, I wonder if the American presents might prove to be a bit ephemeral, while the Danish gifts may well be displayed or used for years.

As for me, Christmas will be in Connecticut this year. It is time for some personal re-Americanization after being immersed (and thoroughly enjoying) several consecutive years of the marvelous Danish Christmas.