Wednesday, May 11

On Wednesday we made the first of our three trips to Munich to go to the BMW innovation campus and listen to a presentation, which was about the marketing strategy of the company and how they are heavily invested in expanding their social media platform in order to get to as many customers as possible. They also talked about the expanding demand for electric cars, and how their i Series of completely electric cars will meet that. It sounds like they are pioneering this shift of automobile manufacturers from just building cars to building a community and lifestyle with people who own BMW’s, and because of that their competition has changed slightly from Audi and Volkswagen to Google and Uber, companies that have mastered the social media experience. The campus was really cool, with many of their new and not yet released cars driving around, and it seemed as if everyone enjoys working there. The presentation was only about an hour, so after getting back to Augsburg we had some down time before heading to our next site visit, KUKA Robotics, which was just a tram ride away. I think KUKA was the most interesting site visit yet because we actually got to see their production process and walk through the manufacturing floor of the robots making robots. The presentation after the tour could have been better, as the engineer who led the talk only focused on the robots themselves and not really the selling and promotion process, which is what I was hoping they would go over. Also, he ended the Q and A session abruptly without answering all of our questions, which was a disappointment. Overall thought KUKA was quite a cool company and one of the major players in the automation market. After that we went to dinner with a lot more of the Augsburg students, and it was nice for all of us to really hang out for the first time this trip. I am still so impressed at their English-speaking skills, and every day we are finding out new things about their culture, school, etc.