Production at BMW
The Mini was one of the few parts of the former Rover group to be retained by BMW following its takeover in 1994. The Mini was seen as a valuable brand by BMW and it continued to develop it with the introduction of new models in 2006, 2010 and 2014. Production of the car was transferred to the Cowley plant in Oxford and the company spent £230 million on improvements to production facilities. The plant currently produces over 210 000 vehicles a year, but BMW is keen to increase this further. BMW changed
the culture of the organisation by introducing a new way of working at Cowley. It moved away from the traditional flow production to a team-based approach. The workforce was reorganised into self-managing teams or cells of between eight and 15 people. The teams can make production decisions and have job rotation schemes. Responsibility for achieving plant-wide targets is now in the hands of those teams. Each team has more of a stake in the way the business develops rather than a hierarchical system where workers feel alienated from decision-making, stifling initiative and leading to a culture of dependency. The organisation also introduced fortnightly team talks where plans, decisions, suggestions and points of view could be aired.
- Define the following terms:
- Flow production
- Production Methods [4 marks]
- Analyse two disadvantages BMW may have encountered using flow production. [6 marks]
- Explain the characteristics of cell production. [6 marks]
- Evaluate the decision of BMW of switching its production of the Mini from flow production to cell production. [9 marks]