On our way to Vienna we made about an hour
stop at the Volkswagen Bratislava plant in Slovakia. While at the Volkswagen plant we learned about
their production systems and we took a tour of the factory. The first thing the
informed us of was that we weren’t allowed to take any pictures so all we have
is a few pictures from outside the plant. The plant located in Bratislava is
approximately the size of 160 football fields. They have their own medical
center and fire department on site. At this plant they produce six different
models of cars and five different brands. Some of these include Volkswagen,
Audi, and Porsche. They are able to produce up to 2,100 cars per day since it
is running 24 hours a day for about six days a week. They produce the SUV’s 6
days a week and small family cars only 5 days a week. Something I found
interesting was that they only make what is ordered because they do not have
anything in storage for more than a couple days at any one time. As soon as the
parts are pressed out of raw materials in one side of the factory they are
loaded into a cart and transferred to the production line within 24 hours. This
allows them to produce around 440,000 cars per year. Most of the jobs that
workers play a role in is simply transferring materials from shop to shop and
delivering parts to the systems and then robots do the majority of the work.
Employees do take a little part in inspections and if it is a minor flaw it is
simply fixed, but if it is a big flaw then they recycle the car for parts.
Approximately 1 car per day comes back that needs fixed. They have their
workers on shifts that overlap so that the machines do not have much downtime
with their being three 8hour shifts. In these 8 hour shifts each employee gets
one 25 minute break and one 15 minute break. Along with that about 7.5% of
workers are women. For some other cars they produce a lot of the hull of the
cars and send them off to Germany to be finished with the insides. Below is a
picture of a lift transporting a car outside to a test track
After leaving the Volkswagen plant
we traveled into the city of Bratislava to have lunch before heading on to
Vienna. A group of us ate at the 17’s Bar where they serve the best tasting
burgers that I have had in a long time. Then we did a little souvenir shopping
before getting back on the bus. It took a little less than 2 more hours to get
the rest of the way to Vienna where we checked into the hotel. We then said
goodbye to Szilvia and hello to our new tour guide Manuela. After checking in we had an orientation to get
our transportation passes and a little information on the city and then a
couple hours of free time before dinner. I personally went with a few people to
find an ATM and we also stopped into the local Aldi’s to see what it looked
like and get some snack like foods that would travel easily for cheap. Then I
was able to come back to the hotel and get a short nap in before dinner.
Rachel
For dinner we went to Wiener
Wirtschaft where they served us 3 courses. The first course was cream of
asparagus soup, followed by the second course of Viennese style boiled beef,
potatoes, and root vegetables, and ending with the third course shown below of
homemade apple strudel with a vanilla cream sauce. The food was delicious!
After we were done with dinner we
went to the fair/amusement park as a group. Some looked around, some rode
rides, I went with Stephanie, and Ashley C. to ride the World’s Oldest Farris
wheel. Here are some pictures of the view.
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