Porches in Stuttgart

First I visited the Mercedes museam in Stuttgart. Stuttgart is the headquarters for Daimler Chrysler and is where the automobile was invented. The Mercedes museam was pretty good as it displays the original vehicles that were produced by Daimler and Benz as well as some of their race cars and current cars. There were alot of Japanese tourists here.

For some reason I thought that Germans would all be driving German cars, but that is not the case here. I am not sure if even the majority of cars are German. Maybe... There are alot of Mazdas, Renaults, Peugots, Fords as well.

Stuttgart is a beautiful city. The city centre is encircled by a steep valley. I learned pretty quick how steep it is, because the hostel is located up about 15 minutes of straight stairs (like a quarter grouse grind - say)

On my second day in Stuttgart I went to the Porsche museam and factory tour. The factory tour was very cool:

* At this location they produce about 150 911s a day
* Every station in the car assembly is timed to 5 minutes
* The car engines are each assembled by only one mechanic. The mechanics used to sign the engine, but when Porsche enthusiasts discovered that some mechanics were producing consistely better engines, and were then requesting certain engine mechanics to build their Porches, Porsche put an end to the signitures.
* The factory is very small and compact. The assembly line takes the cars between several different floors (I expected the factory to be all on one floor)
* There are these little robot carts that drive around and were bumping into us on the tour
* All engines for all the cars are built in Stuttgart (except one)
* The workers are required to have about 3 years experience before they are allowed on the assembly line
* All engines are stress tested before being put into the cars. Almost all cars are given road tests prior to delivery
* Porsche is out of real estate and they are operating at capacity in Stuttgart. There are a couple old buildings in the middle of their complex which they are not allowed to tear down and rebuild because of German heritage laws. The VW beetle was designed in these buildings. (Ferdinand Porshe was a famous designer for Mercedes and he then founded Porsche as a design company and, among other things, designed the Bug for VW).
* Two couples (of about 15 people) on our tour had just bought Porshes and had come here to see the assembly. I don´t know if they get to see their Porshes yet.
* The Porsche philosophy is based on the Japanese Kaisen principles:
1. Workers must see the product of their labour
2. Workers must be able to make improvements
Workers are required to suggest improvements and if the improvements are adopted, then the worker gets 30% of the savings earned by the company for one year. The tour guide said that either 3Million or 30Million euros were paid out of this plan last year (I don´t remember which)
* The tour guide was proud of what his CEO was doing.