Products and solutions Mar 20, 2000 1:00 AM
Automotive segment: Krupp Drauz Ingenieurbetrieb supplies door pillars for VW Passat
On March 2 of this year, Krupp Drauz Ingenieurbetrieb GmbH officially opened a new manufacturing facility to produce door pillars for the VW Passat. Located in Meerane, Saxony/Germany, close to Volkswagen's Mosel site, the new facility has a capacity of over 250,000 door pillars per year operating in three shifts a day. The welded assemblies are supplied to the Mosel plant on a just-in-time basis.
Krupp Drauz Ingenieurbetrieb GmbH planned and manufactured the fully-automated welding lines itself and put them into operation. A total of 14 welding robots are used. Realization of the project - from the start of the planning and design phase on November 10, 1999 to the first production delivery to VW on January 28, 2000 - took only around two and a half months.
Volkswagen used to manufacture the door pillars itself before issuing a Europe-wide tender last year to outsource them. Volkswagen AG is one of Krupp Drauz Ingenieurbetrieb GmbH's key accounts and has already taken delivery of manufacturing lines and equipment for its plants in Wolfsburg, Braunschweig, Mlada Boleslav, Bratislava and Mosel. Further customers include Audi, BMW and DaimlerChrysler.
The door pillar production plant in Meerane marks the entry into a new, additional market segment for Krupp Drauz Ingenieurbetrieb GmbH, previously involved primarily in the supply of manufacturing systems and equipment. In future the company intends to expand its activities in producing welded automotive assemblies for production supply.