KARLSRUHE: After some bitter setbacks involving plant closures and furloughed workers during the pandemic, carmaker Daimler is trying to turn things around with the launch of a new S-Class at a shiny, new, 5G-powered Mercedes-Benz factory.
Launching together with the latest flagship Mercedes car on Wednesday was the latest flagship Mercedes plant in Sindelfingen, Germany.
After a long PR build-up, CEO Ola Kaellenius has kicked off production the company's new Factory 56 - a completely new, fully networked and digitalised, CO2-neutral plant, which Daimler hopes it will help set new standards in automobile production.
In addition to the new S-Class, the top model of the EQ electric series, the EQS, is also to be built there from next year, followed by the Maybach.
But for now, everything is riding on the success of the new S-Class and how it gets built at this high-tech factory.
No other model is as important for the brand's prestige as the S-Class. Daimler traditionally incorporates just about all the technology available to it into this flagship car.
For weeks now, the company has been raising expectations by teasing details of the launch.
"So many things had to be rescheduled this year, both in our private and out business lives," Kaellenius said ahead of the launch on Twitter. "Not this one."
According to Daimler, the car is to be launched in Germany and Europe at the end of the year, with China and the US following in the first half of 2021.
With the Factory 56, the company is also tackling a problem that Kaellenius has repeatedly addressed since he took office a good year ago: efficiency.
The Factory 56, which is about 30 soccer fields in size, cost around €730 million (RM3.6bil) to build, Daimler announced during the ceremonial launch on Wednesday.
Complete digitalisation and networking, as well as real-time production 5G data, are expected to make the factory line up to 15 per cent more efficient by 2022, Mercedes-Benz board member Joerg Burzer recently promised.
The factory's MO360 system developed for this purpose is running at full capacity for the first time. If everything runs smoothly, the plant will serve as a blueprint for the global production network in the future.
The plant was designed in such a way that, depending on demand, any other model from compact cars to SUVs could be integrated into current production, the company says.
Daimler doesn't just need the S-Class to be a success - it's practically a must. Like most carmakers, the pandemic has hit the company hard. In the second quarter, the Stuttgart company made a loss of almost €2 billion (RM9.8bil) and now has to save even more than Kaellenius had originally planned.
