No, we aren’t planning to make our next car a BMW.  We just needed a techy/engineering fix.  We toured the plant that builds their X3, X5 and X6 SUVs.  There were some cool advances since I have been through large scale manufacturing plants:

Material handling tow vehicles powered by onboard hydrogen fueled generators.  No more big battery recharging stations.  A computer tracks the torque guns.  It knows which bolt the operator is tightening, sets the torque, and keeps track so that the car won’t move on until they tighten them all.  All the electrical systems are tested remotely using wireless systems.  The guys on the line have nothing to do with it (except to be sure to be out of the way when the computer cycles the sun roof!).  BMW only builds made to order so options are delivered just in time to the workstation in the assembly plant synchronized to match up with the body with its RFID beacon on the hood as it moves through.  Fun.