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Automotive BASF���s Rolls-Royce Team Knows Extravagance I n Goodwood, on the southern coast of England, renowned car manufacturer Rolls-Royce produces its luxury cars, and a five-person BASF team works onsite to ensure smooth operations and to meet customers��� special design wishes. Rolls-Royce is owned by BMW, and BASF has been its exclusive coatings supplier for nearly 10 years. The company introduced the Phantom Series II cars in 2012, offering a two-tone finish in ���Infinity Black��� and ���Cassiopeia Silver,��� a ���real highlight��� for BASF, says Stefan Sickert, BASF account manager. His team takes care of the coatings supply operations and the production of the basecoats needed to meet such special requests. While the e-coated car bodies come from the BMW plant in Dingolfing, the remaining coating layers are applied at Goodwood by the only robots onsite. These coating layers include a double clearcoat that gives the Rolls- Royce models a special-effect finish, ���similar to the elegant appearance of pianos,��� says Michael Br��nnemann, head of BASF���s Special OEM Color Lab. Unique colors for special vehicles, referred to as ���one-offs,��� also can be mixed and applied at the plant. For instance, BASF developed an exclusive gold paint specifically for Rolls-Royce. ���The fact that we are able to promptly implement RollsRoyce customers��� special requests, some of which are quite extravagant, is not a given,��� says Ulrich Horstk��tter, who has been responsible for Rolls-Royce operations at the BASF lab since the cooperation was established. ���This is a process chain that is probably one of the most sophisticated flows in the entire automotive business.��� n There is hardly one Rolls-Royce that resembles another. Customer wishes are top priority, especially when it comes to coatings, and these wishes are taken care of by the BASF special color lab. (Photo courtesy of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.) 20 JANUARY 2013 in 1994 and employs more than 7,000 people, produces the X3, X5 and X6 sports activity vehicles. According to Josef Kerscher, president of BMW Manufacturing in Spartanburg, the U.S. is the BMW Group��s largest market, where it sells more vehicles than in its home country of Germany. Improving and speeding up the paint process was needed to meet a growing demand for BMW vehicles. ��With our flexible production processes and flexible supply chain, we were able to increase the daily production volume by more than 30 percent to meet demand,�� Kerscher says. He led BMW through a $750 million expansion in 2008 in which the paint shop upgraded to the new B1:B2 system. The plant currently is undergoing an additional $1 billion expansion that will increase production and add about 1,400 more jobs to the facility. 12 PAinTing STAgeS AT Bmw The BMW paint shop covers about 700,000 sq ft, and every vehicle receives two protective corrosion coats, sealant, primer, basecoat and clear coat. In all, there are more than a dozen stages in painting a BMW, and a computerized tracking system monitors every car through each stage over the six miles of conveyors in the paint shop. It takes about 12 hours to complete the painting process on a vehicle, during which time the vehicle travels about four miles. The paint shop produces a finished vehicle every 78 seconds, or 46 units each hour. More than 4,000 gal of paint travel through about 13 miles of stainless steel pipe. The company says it is the first ��green�� paint shop in the world, using methane gas from a nearby landfill to power its ovens and most of the equipment used in the coating area. About 3/4 gal of paint is used for the basecoat of a vehicle,