450 BMW employees to be trained by TÜV NORD Mexico

Participants at a workshop in Munich organised by QMS and BMW to heighten the awareness of the instructors of the philosophy and way of working at BMW.

Production at BMW’s Mexico plant will start in 2019.

The training centre is located on the factory premises. 

Pamela Delgadillo and Raul Mitre in front of the new BMW training centre.

Javier Couto and Gerardo Mata from TÜV NORD Mexico are faced with a mammoth task: this year and the next, BMW will be training around 450 employees in a total of 30 training units. The topics will be the basics of quality management and Six Sigma Yellow Belt training. TÜV NORD Mexico will be providing these training courses, having won the contract jointly with German company QMS. Assistance was provided by Pamela Delgadillo from TÜV NORD Mexico, who attended a seminar at BMW in December, at which she learned about the ambitious programme for the first time.

180 kilometres away from TÜV NORD Mexico’s head office is where the action is. The BMW Training Centre is located in San Luis Potosí; the new BMW plant is being built right next door and is set to become the German car manufacturer’s third largest plant worldwide. The company plans to relocate production of the 3-series from Germany to Mexico; these models are also still being built in China.

Raul Mitre, Managing Director of TÜV NORD Mexico, says that there are no uncertainties surrounding the project, even despite the trade restrictions planned by US President Donald Trump: However, only a small proportion of the plant will produce vehicles for the US market.

According to Herman Bohrer, head of BMW Mexico, the investment programme will continue: This year, the company will invest over 17 million euros in the training and further education of its 700 employees; this figure will rise to 35 million next year, of which almost one-tenth will go to the training centre. “We’re going to work a lot more with BMW,” says Raul Mitre, full of confidence that this training will open doors, also to further measures: TÜV NORD Mexico is currently bidding for Value Added Production, an internal BMW production system.