BMW Group Celebrates Opening the World's First Virtual Factory in NVIDIA Omniverse

The world’s industries are accelerating  digitalization with over $3. 4 trillion being invested in the next three years. We at BMW strive to be leading edge in automotive digitalization.

With NVIDIA Omniverse and AI we set up new factories faster and produce more efficiently than ever. This results in significant savings for us. It all starts with planning – a complex process in which we need to connect many tools, datasets and specialists around the world.

Traditionally, we are limited, since data is managed separately  in a variety of systems and tools. Today, we are changing all that. We are developing “Custom Omniverse Applications” to connect our existing tools, know-how and teams – all in a unified view.

Omniverse is cloud-native and cloud-agnostic  enabling teams to collaborate across our virtual factories from everywhere. I’m about to join a virtual planning session for Debrecen in Hungary –  our new EV factory – opening in 2025. Letʼs jump in.

Planner 1:Milan is joining. Milan: Hello, everyone. Planner 1: Hi Milan – great to see you.

We’re in the middle of an optimization loop for our body shop. Would you like to see? Milan: Thanks – I’m highly interested. 

And I’d like to invite a friend. Planner 1: Sure. Jensen: Hey Milan!

Good to see you. Milan: Jensen – good to see you, too.  Welcome to our virtual planning session.

Jensen: It's great to be here. What are we looking at? Milan: This is our global planning team who are working on a robot cell in Debrecen’s digital twin.

Matthias, tell us what’s happening … Planner 1: We just learned the  production concept requires some changes. We’re now reconfiguring the layout  to add a new robot into the cell. Planner 2: Ok, but f we add a new robot, on the logistics side, we’ll need to move our storage container.

Planner 3: Alright, let's get this new robot in. Planner1: That’s perfect. But let’s double-check - can we run the cell?

… Excellent. Jensen: Milan, this is just incredible! Virtual factory integration is essential for every industry.

I’m so proud to see what our teams  did together. Congratulations! Milan: We are working globally to optimize locally.

After planning, operations is  king, and we’ve already started! To celebrate the launch of our virtual plant, I’d like to invite you to open  the first digital factory with me. Jensen: I’d be honored.

Let’s do it!