5 days ago
BMW Group scales virtual factory to streamline production planning
The
BMW Group
industrialised its
Virtual Factory
in a move aimed at accelerating production planning across its global manufacturing network. As of June 2025, the company had been scaling the use of digital twins across over 30 of its production sites, replacing many real-world trials with simulations.
Between now and 2027, the group planned to integrate more than 40 new or updated vehicles into its production system, initially through virtual planning. This shift was projected to reduce production planning costs by up to 30 percent.
Virtual collision checks and simulation tools
A key development was the implementation of digital, automated collision checks. These used construction data and 3D scans to simulate how a new vehicle would move through a production line. The system checked automatically for any potential collisions. What once took nearly four weeks of manual testing was now simulated in three days.
Previously, physical vehicle bodies had to be manually guided through production lines, often over several weekends. In the paint shop, this sometimes required draining and cleaning dip coating tanks, leading to high costs and downtime.
Integration with iFACTORY and NVIDIA Omniverse
Virtual planning formed a part of the
BMW
Group's iFACTORY strategy and was supported by tools that integrated data from buildings, equipment, logistics, and vehicle components. The digital twins were hosted in a 3D industrial metaverse application built using NVIDIA Omniverse. This setup enabled real-time simulations of layouts, robotics, and logistics.
The company also reported progress in other areas, including human simulations to optimise manual tasks and the automated extraction of environmental maps from 3D scans to support smart transport systems.
The BMW Group planned to showcase its Virtual Factory at NVIDIA
GTC
in Paris.
