More Factory Production Questions

[Shumdit]

Originally Posted by MD11F

from start to finish the paint and assembly of the car takes 1 week or so. Basically the parts are made in Germany and it's all assembled in SC.

That's not really a true statement. The German parts content is about 70 percent, but considering the number of parts in the engine/transmission, etc. (which come from Germany), it skews the numbers somewhat. The body panels, interior components, seats, exhaust, etc. all come from local suppliers in the Upstate SC area. Wheels come from Ronal's plant in Mexico (in most cases) and some other items come from other countries besides the US and Germany, but your posts make it sound like the US plant only exists to to build kits shipped over from Germany. In fact the first cars built at the US factory in 94 were kits shipped over from the motherland, but the US plant now uses many local suppliers just like GM, FORD, etc. In any case no one is running things the way Henry Ford did with the River Rouge Complex back in the 1920's (when they took raw ore off the boats and made their own engines from scratch, and the whole car was pretty much built from scratch there). All car plants are to a large degree really just assemblers of components sourced from other companies under contract (hence the term "assembly plant"). They may still make some components, but many have found it cheaper and better for business to outsource components. BMW Manufacturing is not just putting kits from Germany together. I know you might not have meant it that way, but I hate that some people might get the wrong idea about what goes on here at the US plant.