As BMW’s Mini plant leads
the celebrations of a centenary of car-making in Oxford, preparations are under
way to install 1,000 robots for the next generation of Mini.
The
celebrations take place on 28 March 2013 - 100 years to the day when the first
"Bullnose" Morris Oxford was built by William Morris, a few hundred
metres from where the modern plant stands today.
The plant built 20 cars each week at the start, but the business
grew rapidly and over the century 11.65 million cars were produced. Today,
Plant Oxford employs 3,700 associates who manufacture up to 900 Minis a day,
and has contributed over 2.25 million Minis to the total tally.
Major investment is currently under way at the plant to create new
facilities for the next generation Mini.
Famous British brands
Over
the decades that followed the emergence of the Bullnose Morris Oxford in 1913,
came cars from a wide range of famous British brands - and one Japanese -
including MG, Wolseley, Riley, Austin, Austin Healey, Mini, Vanden Plas,
Princess, Triumph, Rover, Sterling and Honda, besides founding marque Morris -
and MINI.
The Pressed Steel Company, part of the Cowley operation, built
body shells for Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, MG, Standard-Triumph, Ford and
Hillman, as well as tooling dies for Alfa Romeo. At various stages in its
history it has also built Tiger Moth aircraft, ambulances, military trucks,
jerry cans, components for Horsa gliders, parachutes and iron lungs.
The plant has produced an array of famous cars, including the
Bullnose Morris, the Morris Minor, the Mini, India's Hindustan Ambassador and
today's Mini. It also produced Hondas for a short period in the 1980s, as well
as some slightly notorious models including the much-derided (though far from
unsuccessful) Morris Marina, the startling 1970s wedge that was the Princess
and in the Austin Maestro one of the world's earliest ‘talking' cars.
There have been eight custodians of Plant Oxford over the past 100
years, beginning with founder William Morris who owned the factory both
directly and through Morris Motors until 1952, when Morris merged with
arch-rival Austin to form the British Motor Corporation. Morris himself, by
this time known as Lord Nuffield, was chairman for six months before retiring.
He died in 1963. During the early ‘60s the plant had as many as 28,000
employees producing an extraordinary variety of models.
In 1967 BMC became British Motor Holdings after merging with
Jaguar, and the following year that group was merged with the Leyland truck
company (which also included Triumph and Rover) to form the British Leyland
Motor Corporation. Nationalisation followed in 1974, the group undergoing
several renamings until it became the Rover Group in 1986. Boss Graham Day was
charged with privatising the company for the Thatcher government, which was
completed in 1988 with the sale to British Aerospace. They in turn would sell
the Group, which included Land Rover, to BMW in 1994.
Over 1,000 robots
BMW
Group invested heavily in Rover, deciding early on that a replacement for the
Mini would be a priority. But considerable headwinds, including an unfavourable
exchange rate and falling sales lead to BMW selling both Rover and Land Rover
in 2000, while retaining the Mini brand, Plant Oxford, the associated Swindon
pressings factory and the new Hams Hall engine plant that was preparing for
production
Today, Plant Oxford is flourishing with the manufacture of the
Mini Hatchback, Convertible, Clubman, Clubvan, Roadster and Coupé.
It is currently undergoing a major investment that includes the
installation of 1,000 new robots. These are being installed in both a new body
shop and the existing facility in readiness for the next generation of Mini.
This represents the lion's share of a £750million investment programme,
announced in the last year, which also sees the significant upgrading and
installation of new facilities at the company's Hams Hall engine plant and the
Swindon body pressings factory.
Up to now, Plant Oxford has favoured robots from KUKA, the German robot makes based in Augsburg. plant Oxford is highly automated.
The plant has a long history of export success from the 1930s
onwards, Morris products accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the nation's
total exports by the mid- 1930s. In 1950, the plant produced its 100,000th
overseas model - a Morris Minor - and by 1962 BMC was shipping 320,000 examples
of its annual production of 850,000 vehicles to over 170 countries, Oxford
contributing a major part of that total. BMC was the UK's biggest exporter in
the early ‘60s, just as Morris had been in the ‘30s.
Sir Alec Issigonis
During
World War 2 the plant played a role, building military equipment that included
Tiger Moth aircraft. Parachutes, jerry cans and aircraft sub-assemblies were
also manufactured in large numbers. Cowley also carried out over 80,000 repairs
on damaged Spitfire and Hurricane aircraft.
Plant Oxford has employed a number of motor industry luminaries,
besides founder William Morris, including Sir Alec Issigonis, who designed the
Morris Minor and the Mini that were built there, Leonard Lord, who would go on
to run the British Motor Corporation, Eric Lord, who ran the plant when it
reached a production peak of 6,000 cars a week during the 1960s, and plant
director Sir George Turnbull, who went onto help Hyundai become a manufacturer
of own-design cars rather than licence-built models during the 1970s.
A number of senior figures in the motor industry and in BMW Group
today are former Plant Oxford employees, including Herbert Diess, a previous
Mini Plant Oxford director and now a member of the BMW AG board of management
responsible for development.
Today, Plant Oxford forms the central element of BMW Group's UK
production network, which includes the Hams Hall engine factory in Birmingham
and the Swindon pressings plant, formerly a part of Pressed Steel. The network
faces a bright future as the next generation Mini family enters production over
the coming years amid a trend of rising sales and exports.
