Mercedes-Benz Cars is starting construction of its first “Full-Flex Plant“ in Kecskemét, Hungary, about 90 km in the south of Budapest. Overall, the company is investing one billion euros in the new car plant and creating over 2,500 jobs. The first global “Full-Flex Plant” of Mercedes-Benz Cars is the next step on the road to smart production: It is based on the “Factory 56” principles introduced in February, and is thus digitised consistently, designed for sustainable production and puts the human right at the centre of all activities.
In a ‘Full-Flex Plant’, several vehicle architectures from compact models to rear-wheel drive sedans and various drive forms, including electric vehicles, can be flexibly produced on one line. Thereby we lift the production concept of ‘Factory 56’ to the next level.
The new car plant in Kecskemét consists of a press shop, a body-in-white shop, a paint shop and an assembly. The plant is highly efficient and has a CO2-neutral energy supply. With the “Full-Flex Plant“, Mercedes-Benz Cars is creating additional capacity and also technical requirements for the flexible production of future vehicles. This includes passenger cars with a wide variety of body and drive variants. Both passenger cars with conventional drive variants and also electric vehicles using the latest technology in automated driving can be produced - under the premise of safety and in compliance with the statutory regulations.
To mark the laying of the cornerstone for the second plant at the Hungarian site in Kecskemét on June 5th, 2018, representatives from the worlds of politics and business came together. Besides Markus Schäfer, Péter Szijjjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, Klaudia Szemereyné Pataki, Mayoress of Kecskemét and Christian Wolff, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Kft. and site manager for the Mercedes-Benz Kecskemét plant, took part in the celebrations.



The basic idea of “Factory 56” assembly is applied to an entire site
In February, Mercedes-Benz Cars presented “Factory 56” in Sindelfingen, one of the most modern car production facilities in the world. The human is at the centre of all activities and it is consistently “Digital, flexible, green”. Core elements are the digital interconnection of the infrastructure including the digital control of the material flow and the quality control. Tablets, handhelds, smartphones and smart watches support employees in their daily work. The plant is not only digitised consistently according to Industry 4.0, it is also connected to other productions in the global production network.
The company is now transferring the blue print of “Factory 56” to a complete factory. Because all parts of the plant - from the press shop to assembly - are new, the entire production flow can be optimally coordinated. In addition to the fully flexible production of vehicles with front- or rear-wheel drives, other types, such as electric drives, can also be produced on the same line. Production will start at the beginning of the next decade.
For the new „Full-Flex Plant“, 972,700 m3 of earth are being moved. The area under construction is 382,033 m2. This corresponds to approximately 54 football pitches. More than 17,000 tons of steel will be used in the construction of the second plant at the Kecskemét site. With this amount of steel, around 1.7 Eiffel Towers in Paris could be built.