The Grand Tour of German Automotive—Volkswagen Wolfsburg

Volkswagen is one of the largest car makers in the world, and the largest German car maker. The Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg is by far the largest German automotive plant. However, in terms of lean performance, it is merely mediocre. On the other hand, it is not easy to run a production in protected historic buildings. Lets go and have a look at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg…

Disclaimer: The following is based on my personal observations and opinions and may not be accurate or correct. It is based on publicly available information and what I observed during public tours, and when I observed it. The observations may differ at a different time and place.

VW General

Volkswagen is one of the largest car makers in the world. Besides the Volkswagen brand, the Volkswagen group includes Audi, Porsche, Seat, and Skoda, the ultra-luxury car makers Lamborghini, Bentley, and Bugatti, and the commercial vehicle makers Scania and MAN.

Volkswagen was founded in 1937 under the Nazi Party to provide a people’s car (the literal meaning of Volks-Wagen) to give them “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude). Back then, cars were a luxury item in Germany. During the war Volkswagen built vehicles for the Nazi military, using mostly slave labor, many from concentration camps.

Their most famous car was the VW Beetle, of which over 21 million were produced between 1938 and 2003. The VW Golf was even more popular, selling over 35 million cars since 1974. I learned to drive in a Golf (it was my mom’s car, and she always got it back when I was running low on fuel…)

The company is huge, having around 200 000 employees, more than half within Germany. Its revenue is 279 billion Euro in 2022.

In more recent news, Volkswagen is known for the Diesel Gate scandal that broke out in 2015, when the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Volkswagen of using illegal software to cheat on emissions tests for diesel vehicles. The software detected when the vehicles were being tested and lowered the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a harmful pollutant that contributes to smog and respiratory diseases. However, on the road, the vehicles emitted up to forty times more NOx than the legal limit. While Volkswagen was not the only company doing that, it cost it a lot of reputation and money. Some Audi managers actually went to jail in the USA.

Currently, Volkswagen, like many other German car makers, also has problems with changing from combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, and international competitors produce with much lower costs (for more see my blog post on the VW Emden plant).

VW Wolfsburg

The main location of Volkswagen is Wolfsburg, the second largest factory in the world after the Tesla gigafactory in Texas, and with 62 000 employees the largest workplace after Frankfurt Airport.

Hitler himself laid the foundation stone in 1938. The city was initially named Fallersleben but was renamed after the war after nearby Castle Wolfsburg (Wulf Castle). You can still find stone Nazi eagles in the protected historic buildings, albeit the swastikas were removed. As a German, I find it important to preserve history to prevent repeating it. Producing in protected historic buildings, however, has its own challenges, as you cannot really just tear down a wall if it is in the way. The hall I visited originally produced the VW Beetle.

When I visited, the gigantic plant produced five different models, the Golf (all types including Hybrid), the Golf Variant, the Touran, the Tiguan, and the Seat Tarraco. The plant has a capacity of 4000 cars per day, or one car every 16 seconds across four assembly lines. There are two lines for the Golf, one for the Tiguan, and one for more Tiguan, the Touran, and the Tarraco.

The tour was overall short compared to other tours. We also did not walk ourselves but were driven through the plant by a modified Golf pulling some carts with seats. This also meant we did not get as close to the actual production as in many other plants. We were also sitting right behind the exhaust of the combustion engine–driven Golf.

Overall, the plant felt a bit messy, albeit it is hard to say how much is due to the age of the building. There was a bit of construction going on here and there. It is definitely not the cleanest plant I have seen. It did have a lot of andon, which also were mostly green (okay) during our visit.

Press Shop

Our first stop was in the press shop. Small parts were stamped directly from the coil, whereas larger parts were stamped from pre-cut sheet metal. In comparison with BMW or Audi, it felt like the lot sizes for stamping were larger, and a pallet of pre-cut sheet metal contained roughly two or three times as many sheets as at BMW or Audi. Larger lot sizes naturally lead to larger inventories. While it is hard to compare, it also felt like more inventory of already pressed parts. It was just my impression, but it felt like there were lots of stops and idle robots.

Body Shop

We also had a quick run through the body shop, where 3500 of all 5000 robots in Wolfsburg were located. As with most other body shops in Germany, it was highly automated with 97% of the work being done by robots and 3% manual work.

Tiguan Final Assembly

We visited the Tiguan final assembly. As always, I estimate the percentage value add of the assembly lines. The door assembly workers added value 41% of the time, and the final assembly only 39% of the time. This puts the plant in the okay but less impressive group within Germany. The line also had a takt of 90 seconds per car.

The line was running with 3 shifts, with some cleaning between the shifts. According to the guide, including breaks and everything, the line ran 19.5 out of 24 hours on workdays. The workers work in groups of 20 people with 2 team leaders and 1 Meister, which makes the average span of control around 10 people per team leader.

Also, according to the guide, the line has 85% manual work, which felt a bit less than other lines. On the other hand, the front windshields were lifted from a pallet by hand, which to me was unusual. Most other plants use robots to install the front windshield. Logistics was also still mostly manual, albeit some AGV were also providing material.

In my next post I will look at the much better Volkswagen plant in Emden. This plant is going to be an all electric vehicle plant for Volkswagen… and struggles since battery-powered cars from Volkswagen are not selling well. At my estimate, the VW plant in Emden runs at around 25% of its capacity. Now, go out, learn both from the successes and failures of others, and organize your industry!

If You Want to Follow in My Footsteps (All VW Plants )

VW offers lots of factory visits in many of their plants. You can book 1-hour tours for Wolfsburg, where you are driven around in a small train here. Tours in Emden, Hannover, and Salzgitter can be booked here. For Osnabrück you can book tours here. Kassel and Braunschweig can be booked only by prior arrangement here, and for Chemnitz here. There is also the highly unusual Transparent Factory in Dresden, which can be booked here. Not all tours are available in English.

PS: Many thanks to Volkswagen for offering tours through their plants to the public!