Some of you may recall I was in Germany last month for the Society of American Travel Writers convention. As part of the convention, I took a tour of the Volkswagen Transparent factory. The factory is one of the most impressive I have ever toured. However, I was there on a Saturday and and the plant doesn’t built cars during the weekends. That was too bad because I really wanted to film the car making process.
While I wasn’t able to get a video of VW making cars, the crew over at Discovery’s MegaWorld managed to secure exclusive workday access to the no cameras allowed floor to show what goes into the making of Volkswagen’s top of the line Phaeton. Volkswagen developed a number of brilliant technologies for use in the factory, from the moving wood floor and electronically-tracked nuts and bolts to the magnet-driven robots that shuttle the parts around the facility and the cargo tram that delivers them there. All of this and more is on display to visitors as well as customers coming to take delivery directly on premises. The next time I’m in Dresden, I’ll have to remember to visit the factory on a weekday so I can see the place in action.