The Volkswagen assembly plant in Dresden, Germany known as Die Glaserne Manufaktur is a unique car manufacturing plant indeed.
The building itself is located in Dresden’s botanic gardens and looks like a normal modern office building. With striking architecture at first glance you may mistake the building for just one of Volkswagen’s head offices, but on closer inspection behind the huge glass windows you will find an actual car assemble line.
Only final assemble is completed here for the VW premium level cars the Phaeton and the Bentley. All the dirty work of welding the body together and painting is done up the road at Zickau. To minimize impact to the city all the parts including the polished up bodies are delivered on specially built trams appropriately called car-go-trams.
Inside the building there is a bar, a restaurant, offices, a viewing area with interactive displays for visitors and of coarse the plant assembly line.
Completed shells are delivered by tram and stored along the outside glass wall awaiting assemble from here a complex array of robots that navigate themselves about on the Canadian parquetry wood floors.
Assembly is fairly straight forward as all the components like seats drive train and dash are delivered pre assembled on pallets that driverless trucks can manoeuvre around the factory. Many jobs are carried out by humans too like the assembly of the doors, fitting of the seats, trim and wiring loom and finally quality inspection.
Visiting the plant is a good way to see how a car is assembled, this is probably the only plant in the world where the cars a put together in such a clean environment.
Around 150 Phaetons are produced each day in this method and if you live in Germany you have the choice to pick your car up from the plant. There is a glass 15 story robotic car silo that housed completed cars ready for pick up at the plant.
