Mercedes Benz is currently building Factory 56, a very innovative production facility at its Sindelfingen site in Germany. The Mercedes Group describes the facility very accurately as follows:

“In the automotive factory of the future, we’ll be consistently using digital, flexible and green technologies and processes across the board to produce our vehicles. We’ll be creating a modern workspace that is more customised to workforce needs. In our Factory 56 in Sindelfingen, we’ll be increasing flexibility and efficiency significantly in comparison with our current vehicle assemblies and without compromising on quality.”
(Source: https://www.daimler.com/innovation/production/factory-56.html

Mercedes Benz has chosen MINDA’s modular people-mover conveyors in order to deliver the degree of flexibility required. The compact design of the machinery with its fully integrated power-transmission technology means it can be adapted as needed to the production process at any time. The ergonomic workspaces in the assembly facility can be restructured in no time in order to guarantee production runs smoothly when process requirements change. Thanks to the plug & produce solution, the belts can be linked with one another very quickly and production restarted.

The MINDA solution impressed Mercedes Benz’s planning teams to such an extent that the number of belts used was increased in several phases. The rise to over 100 belts (as of December 2019) was managed easily.

MINDA’s modular conveying technology played a key role in ensuring that Mercedes Benz’s vision of flexible and efficient vehicle assembly became reality.