BMW outsources more work to the U.S.
The court of public opinion can be ignorant and selfish. Take the topic of outsourcing, for instance. Many Americans take the idea of outsourcing, and spin it in a way to say the government is allowing huge corporations to ship jobs overseas for less labor.
You hardly ever hear the other side of things, like how huge companies overseas do the same thing to cut down on logistics costs for products within the United States. BMW, the world’s largest luxury automaker, is reportedly planning to invest $900 million in its Spartanburg, S.C. plant by 2014, adding 300 jobs in the process.
BMW SPARTANBURG VEHICLE PRODUCTION
The expansion, the facility’s fifth overall, will boost BMW’s capacity inside the plant to 350,000 vehicles per year in the mid-term. The company has now invested almost $6 billion at the South Carolina plant alone.
“This is in response to rising global demand for our BMW X models, and the expansion of the BMW X family to include the BMW X4,” production boss Frank-Peter Arndt said in a statement today.
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The BMW X4 is the fifth SUV introduced by the German car manufacturer. Three of the other four sport utility vehicles are built at the Spartanburg plant, while the BMW X1 is built in Germany.
If capacity at the Spartanburg facility is indeed increased to 350,000 vehicles, it would become one of BMW’s most productive production plants worldwide. In fact, that figure would top Germany’s Dingolfing facility, the carmaker’s most productive plant in 2011, where 340,000 automobiles were produced.
Outsourcing takes on a global focus, and is not always a one-way street. While companies inside the United States take advantage of cheap labor in other parts of the world, companies in foreign countries oftentimes do the same, taking advantage of the U.S.’ outstanding infrastructure capabilities. Let this be a lesson to the ignorant.
