Daimler Celebrates Ten Years of Local Passenger Car Production in Beijing
 Hubertus Troska (the 3rd person from the right), Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Greater China, Xu Heyi (the 2nd from the left), Chairman of BAIC Group and its subsidiary BAIC Motor, Peter Schabert (the 2nd from the right), President and CEO of BBAC, Frank Deiss (the 1st from the right), Head of Production Powertrain Mercedes-Benz Cars in Untertürkheim at the event. |
- Daimler’s Sino-German production joint venture Beijing Benz Automotive Co., Ltd. (BBAC) was established on August 8, 2005.
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Hubertus Troska: “BBAC undertook tremendous development over the past ten years to now become a key production hub for our company on a global level.”
- Xu Heyi: “The strength of BBAC ten years after its establishment is evidence of the successful Sino-German business partnership between BAIC and Daimler.”
- Peter Schabert: “Driven by the full commitment of our shareholders and a dedicated, qualified Sino-German team, we have paved the way for BBAC’s success over the past ten years.”
- Constant growth is backed by joint investments of €4 billion.
- BBAC is today, in terms of land size, the biggest Mercedes-Benz passenger car plant worldwide.
- Ceremony closed with the lighting of a large rotating Mercedes-Benz star above the BBAC site.
BEIJING/STUTTGART -- August 25, 2015: In an event held in
Beijing on the evening of August 24, Daimler’s Sino-German production
joint venture Beijing Benz Automotive Co., Ltd. (BBAC) successfully
commemorated its tenth anniversary. The joint venture between Daimler and
its Chinese partner BAIC Motor was established on August 8, 2005, and
started to locally produce its first E-Class vehicles (model series 211)
just about four months later. Today the Beijing-based site is the only
Mercedes-Benz plant worldwide that manufactures front- and rear-wheel-drive
vehicles and engines under one roof. The anniversary event also saw the
lighting of a 6 meter rotating Mercedes-Benz star that will shine brightly
in future above the BBAC site.
“2015 marks a decade of a successful partnership
between Daimler and BAIC. Our joint venture BBAC undertook tremendous
development over the past ten years to now become a key production hub for
our company on a global level,” said Hubertus Troska, Member of the
Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Greater China.
“BBAC represents the firm confidence of Mercedes-Benz in the Chinese
market, because continuous investment in localization has and will always
be essential for our business growth in this country.”
“The strength of BBAC ten years after its
establishment is evidence of the successful Sino-German business
partnership between BAIC and Daimler,” noted Xu Heyi, Chairman of
BAIC Group and its subsidiary BAIC Motor. “Through continuously
deepening the close cooperation between our two companies over the past
years, we have been constantly moving forward to further enhance our joint
company’s competitiveness and to set new benchmarks in China’s
automotive industry.”
BBAC’s growth over the past
decade
BBAC has developed
rapidly since its inception ten years ago. In 2014, almost 150,000
vehicles, nearly eight times as many as in 2006, rolled off BBAC’s
production lines, accounting for more than one-half of
Mercedes-Benz’s total 2014 sales volume in China. This figure was
already above 60% as of June 2015, and is expected to grow further in the
future. June 2015 saw also the first time ever that more than 20,000 units
rolled off the assembly lines in a single month, a figure that roughly
equals the company’s annual production from 2007. This constant
growth of BBAC is backed by strong funding: The two shareholders are
jointly investing €4 billion in the company to strategically prepare
the company for the future.
About
€400 million of this investment has been spent solely on the first
ever Mercedes-Benz passenger car engine plant outside of Germany.
Inaugurated in late 2013, the facility produces 4- and 6-cylinder engines,
mainly to meet local demand. The export of key machined engine components
to Mercedes-Benz engine plants in Germany is a side effect, but one that
underlines the high quality of the Beijing-made products. The production
line has been designed to be flexible, with an annual capacity of 250,000
units for the first phase. Higher numbers are planned in line with the
ongoing growth in passenger car sales.
“Driven by the full commitment of our shareholders
and a dedicated, qualified Sino-German team, we have paved the way for
BBAC’s success over the past ten years,” states Peter Schabert,
President and CEO of BBAC. “We have pushed forward the expansion of
the company step-by-step and systematically, to cover today a comprehensive
portfolio of various car and engine models that is flanked by a strong
local R&D and quality management expertise as well.”
In the summer of 2014, BBAC once more
underlined its ambition to build in and for China with the inauguration of
an all-new R&D Center. The focus of the experts is the locally built
product portfolio. The site features various test laboratories and benches,
such as for engines, emissions, and climate and corrosion. It also includes
a proving ground, as well as an endurance and analysis workshop. In
addition, specialists can prepare on-site offline tryouts in
Mercedes-Benz’s first prototype workshop outside Germany.
April 2015 marked another important milestone
in the localization strategy of Mercedes-Benz, with the official kick-off
of production for the German car maker’s first locally built compact
car model, the GLA. Together with the long wheelbase E-Class, the standard
and long wheelbase C-Class, and the GLK, it completes the current lineup of
locally built vehicles. The GLA is produced in a top notch, €720
million compact car plant that is housed within BBAC’s compound, and
was built up from scratch in a record time of less than 3 years. Since its
inauguration BBAC has also become, in terms of land size, the biggest
Mercedes-Benz passenger car plant worldwide. BBAC currently covers a total
area of about 3.7 million square meters, twice as much as a decade
ago.
Globally acknowledged
Mercedes-Benz quality standards
Despite the rapid growth, there has been no lessening of
Mercedes-Benz’s stringent global quality standards in Beijing. At the
core is the quality feedback loop system. It consists of four circles
alongside production and targets identifying and solving potential issues
during production stages. Each loop focuses on the control of a particular
stage of the added-value of the product in the manufacturing process. At
BBAC, though, quality management starts even earlier, for instance with
strict management of local suppliers, currently more than 300 in number, or
simply with strong teamwork between quality, engineering and production
experts, which begins at very early development stages. So the company can
ensure – backed by state-of-the-art technologies – that its
locally produced vehicles and engines are always of excellent
quality.
Employee training is another key
focus for BBAC to keep its quality promise – in particular as the
number of staff has more than quadrupled in the past ten years to over
11,000 employees currently. A key asset for the company has been both
training in China and abroad, including intensive and continuous on-the-job
training and knowledge transfer from the international training programs.
For example, to prepare for the ramp-up of the all-new long wheelbase
C-Class, around 3,000 staff were qualified. 200 of these were sent abroad
for training at the Mercedes-Benz plants in Bremen and in Sindelfingen in
2012. Back in Beijing, these multipliers directly passed on their knowledge
to hundreds of colleagues.