Fun Fact: BMW produces one car a minute on average. Insane!
We have our choice of favourite cars, let’s not get into that debate. But we can’t deny BMW is at the top of the pyramid with other large brands like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche (love their advertising), and more.
In an industry like automobiles, you meet the demand by winning manufacturing.
At each point, from procurement to quality assurance, you want to make sure all parts are optimised for safety and performance.
In today’s AI at Top, we will learn how BMW uses AI across production and manufacturing domains.
How does BMW use AI in production?
BMW’s production floor runs on two interconnected AI systems: AIQX and Car2X.
1/ Artificial Intelligence Quality Next (AIQX) is BMW’s vision system.
It uses cameras and sensors embedded on conveyor belts to automate quality control.
To give you a couple of examples,
At the Spartanburg plant, 26 cameras capture images as vehicles move down the assembly line. AI algorithms analyse this visual data in real time, identify issues, and flag them for immediate human correction.
At the Dingolfing plant, AIQX went beyond visual inspection. The enterprise deployed Acoustic Analytics to perform audio-based quality checks. The AI model listens for anomalies in vehicle assembly and detects defects through sound patterns, which are hard for humans to notice.
The model’s precision helps identify the faintest of defects, ensuring top-class quality.
2/ On the other hand, Car2X operates on an entirely different principle.
Car2X transforms every BMW on the production line into an active participant in the manufacturing process.
The cloud-based technology enables real-time communication between the vehicles under construction and BMW’s production system. During assembly, vehicles generate data streams to autonomously interact with production resources and the cloud.
A vehicle can self-report its build configuration, communicate quality parameters, and automatically share relevant messages with production systems.
In other words, Car2X allows vehicles to participate in their own quality assurance.
This “closed-loop” approach reduces human intervention and production time massively.
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3/ BMW builds virtual environments to reduce production errors
iFactory is BMW’s large vision to transform its facilities that aims efficiency, digitalisation, and sustainability.
In our last edition, we learned how UPS uses a digital twin to run complex scenarios and be crisis-ready before it occurs.
BMW, in partnership with NVIDIA, applies a similar approach.
The company creates photorealistic replicas of entire production facilities, then uses those virtual environments to plan, simulate, and validate manufacturing processes before implementing changes in the real world.
Starting in 2020, the company 3D-scanned all of its vehicle and engine plans globally. It’s more than 7 million square meters of indoor production space and 15 million square meters of outdoor areas.
BMW’s new Debrecen plant in Hungary became the company’s first facility planned and validated entirely virtually before physical construction.
Factory planners worldwide can now access detailed 3D facility models online, make adjustments, and immediately understand how changes affect real-time production.
The planning processes that previously required months now take days.
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4/ BMW built the world’s largest reference data set for AI in manufacturing. Then opensourced it.
The company built SORDI (Synthetic Object Recognition Dataset for Industries). It’s the world’s largest dataset with 800,000 photorealistic images spanning 80 categories of industrial objects.
It enables engineers without data science expertise or access to train computer vision models for manufacturing.
By open-sourcing SORDI, BMW positions itself as a reference player, attracting researchers, vendors, and tooling around its formats and workflows.
5/ AI for Procurement Teams
BMW’s procurement division created a multi-agent system called AIconic.
It solves decision-making for procurement teams with two core usecases:
Tender Assistant: Creates high-quality tender documents with template selection and content creation based on trained sample cases.
Offer Analyst: Analyses and compares tender responses. When suppliers submit proposals, the AI enables interactive engagement with documents, allowing users to quickly review legal aspects and key evaluation criteria.
What’s next and exciting for BMW?
Two things: Humanoid robots and conversational models inside cars.
Humanoids:
The Figure 02 humanoid robot completed an 11-month pilot at BMW’s Spartanburg plant. It’s the first use of humanoids in BMW’s production.
During the pilot, Figure 02 robots ran 10-hour shifts, accumulating 1250 hours of runtime. The robots loaded over 90,000 sheet metal parts and contributed to the production of 30,000+ BMW X3 vehicles.
“With an early test operation, we are now determining possible applications for humanoid robots in production. We want to accompany this technology from development to industrialisation.”
Conversational AI:
BMW is now integrating Alexa+ technology in production vehicles. AI will respond to natural language questions.
A driver can ask, “What is the world’s most famous painting and where can I find it?” These questions can be about both vehicle and general topics.
The feature will roll out in the BMW iX3 in the second half of 2026, initially in Germany and the USA.
2026 has some interesting developments to look forward to for leaders in manufacturing and car enthusiasts.
Sources:
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