BMW Group has opened a new IT and software hub in Romania to accelerate the company’s digital transformation across both its driver-facing automotive software activities and its production-based Industry 4.0 initiatives. These include “cloud innovations and AI”, it said. The new site, called BMW TechWorks Romania, will become its European hub for innovation. It is a joint venture with NTT Data, the system integrator division of Japanese telecoms conglomerate NTT. The pair have worked together for 30 years, according to RCR Wireless.
NTT Data brings experience in agile software development and local knowledge of the Romanian IT landscape, it said. The facility is located in Cluj-Napoca, a university city in the Transylvania region in the northwest of the country, and a “dynamic environment for innovation and IT talent”, according to BMW. The Munich-based automotive firm said it expects to double the number of existing staff at the site, to 250 by the end of the year (2024); and to employ more than 1,000 at its Romania hub “in the long term”. BMW employs 9,400 people globally in software development.
It wants to achieve a “double-digit million turnover” at the facility by the end of the year. The stated aim of the site is to develop “central building blocks for IT projects” in the EU region, with a focus on “connected procurement” to underpin “highly complex supply chains and control systems”, “digital shopfloor” to create a “modern production IT” infrastructure as the “backbone of the BMW iFactory” strategy, and a “direct sales model” to develop “central IT components” to enable direct sales if BMW- and Mini-branded cars in Europe.
BMW’s iFactory gambit is billed as a “revolutionary strategy for automotive production” that sets a template for “lean, green, digital” Industry 4.0 practices covering “flexible, efficient, sustainable, and digital manufacturing technologies”. It is being implemented at all BMW plants worldwide. BMW signed a deal with NTT Data in March to establish a joint venture in Romania to expand its network of software hubs and hire new developer talent. The new facility in Romania joins a network of TechWorks hubs in Germany, South Africa, the USA, Portugal, and China.
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