WIT Engineering Society arranged a trip for 44 second to fourth year students to go to Munich, Germany to visit two BMW plants and the MAN truck
Hi. My name is Emma Crotty and I am studying BEng (Hons) in Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering year 4 in South East Technological University (WIT).
As part of the engineering society, Frankie Tchiofo and I organised a college trip for 44 students to Munich, Germany to visit two separate BMW plants and MAN truck. This included students from second to fourth year from the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering courses in the School of Engineering. We were joined for part of the trip by some of our lecturers; Liam O’Shea, Ned Cullinan, Mary Doyle-Kent, and Lorraine Roche. The trip took place on Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 February 2020.
BMW
The group decided to visit the BMW plants as they are within the leading luxury automotive industry with a series of iconic driving machines exceling in design, manufacturing and the ultimate driving experience worldwide.
We decided to visit two separate plants in one day to make the most of our time in the home of BMW. The Dingolfing plant is situated one hour north-east of Munich city. This plant is BMW group’s largest vehicle production site in Europe which produces the 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Series, as well as components for BMW’s electric vehicles and car bodies for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. This makes the tour impressive to follow and really showed the students the production of the cars from start to finish.
BMW Welt is located only 20 minutes north of Munich City. This is the company’s headquarters and is surrounded by the legendary BMW tower and BMW museum. This was a place full of history of the global brand which the students experienced first-hand. The buildings open architecture and car displays had us drawn in at first glance.
MAN Truck
The MAN Truck plant is located 20 minutes north-west of Munich City. This Truck & Bus group plant is the parent plant and the location of the head office. The Munich plant produces trucks in the heavy series with a permissible gross vehicle weight of 18 to 41 tons. The plant also produces cabs and driven axles, transfer cases and drive shafts. The students got to experience an entirely different automotive production tour which brought more knowledge to the industry and the production of all automotive parts.
Munich
While in Munich, students explored the city and got to visit attractions such as The Deutsches Museum of Science and Technology.
The total cost for each student was €155 which was extremely good value. This would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from Engineers Ireland South East Division, SEAM, Tegan, Nypro, Eirgen, and the Department of Engineering Technology at SETU. Thank you for your continued support