Manufacturing of the 3-series sedan in BMW’s plant in San Luis Potosí, Mexico , is scheduled to begin in August 2018. The automobile manufacturer announced in advance that the entire paint shop will be equipped by the supplier Dürr , who will supply all of the technology from pretreatment, cathodic dip painting and spray booths with application technology through to the dryers. In addition to the cloud-capable process and motion control system EcoRCMP2 (robot control modular panel), the EcoScreen Maintenance Assistant software developed by Dürr is to be used there for the first time, which determines the system status based on the number of switching cycles of the valves or the load profiles of the robots’ servomotors. BMW aims to adjust the required maintenance to the actual needs in doing so.

BMW is installing its fully automated, integrated paint process (IPP) in San Luis Potosí, which is already in use at its mini plant in Oxford. The paint shop, which is networked according to the Industry 4.0 concept, will initially process 30 vehicles per hour, although this number should later increase to 60. The base coating area was designed for 60 vehicles per hour from the start.