BMW and NVIDIA Roll-out Virtual Vehicle Production “Revolution" at Plant in Hungary

BMW Group’s Debrecen plant in Hungary has become its first facility to be planned and validated completely virtually. The planning concept was realised in collaboration with its partner NVIDIA.

The future plant in Debrecen is scheduled to open in 2025.

Construction has just begun, and the new facility is scheduled to produce the BMW Group’s next generation of all-electric models: the Neue Klasse.

BMW is taking a digital-first approach to validate and optimise complex manufacturing systems across its production network using NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, a platform for building and operating 3D industrial metaverse applications, to run real-time digital twin simulations to optimise layouts, robotics and logistic systems virtually. .

Engineering and planning experts from the two companies worked, in close collaboration to help BMW build Omniverse applications that meet the BMW Group’s specific requirements. 

Omniverse will be extended across the BMW product network around the world.

BMW AG Board Member for Production, Milan Nedeljković, says: “Virtualisation and artificial intelligence are accelerating and refining our planning. With the various planning systems consolidated within a digital twin, our teams around the world can now work together in real-time and make decisions faster and on a more solid foundation. This makes us much quicker and more efficient and saves on costs as well.”

“Digitalization is moving fastest in the automotive industry and BMW has been a leader in advancing this vision,” adds Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “We are partnering closely with BMW, using NVIDIA Omniverse to help streamline their manufacturing processes, enhance collaboration and further efficiency. Our collaboration will continue to push the frontiers of virtual integration for the next generation of smart, connected factories around the world”. 

In a joint demo at the NVIDIA GTC, a global conference for the era of AI and the metaverse, Nedeljković, took Huang on a virtual planning session for the new body shop.

Nedeljković described the real-time collaboration between the different BMW Group planning departments and their partners as a “revolution in factory planning”.