The 2014 Mercedes-Benz
S Class should be arriving at dealerships next month, and in
preparation for that, the first few S Class units have reportedly
started rolling off the assembly line at the carmaker’s Sindelfingen,
Germany plant. The S400 Hybrid, apparently, will be the first car released for the consumer market; in the photo above, Mercedes
CEO Dieter Zetsche and manufacturing head Andreas Renschler are there
to commemorate the moment as the S Class prepares to make its debut in a
few weeks from now. The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class is scheduled to debut stateside in the fall.
Reports claim that Mercedes has invested almost a billion Euros in its Sindelfingen facility; this plant actually churns out several other Mercedes
models, but several S Class variants, including the flagship sedan, are
being manufactured there. The plant will also take care of
manufacturing the S Class Coupe, which will supplant the outgoing CL
Class. This isn’t the first time such has been speculated, but a press
release from Mercedes suggests that the name change may become official once the S Class Coupe is released.
On the business side of things, Mercedes’ investments were made in an effort to curb
production costs by as much as two billion Euros, or $2.66 billion USD,
by the end of 2014. The Sindelfingen plant makes use of new, more
cost-effective procedures and technology, including a new join casting
process for aluminum alloys on the 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class.
New advances in engineering have also resulted in energy consumption per vehicle getting reduced by about 20 percent. Further, Mercedes-Benz
staff has been retrained, and the new “pick-by-projector” logistics
system also allows for a more cost-effective system; here, workers
choose the storage unit with the
required piece when choosing parts. This new system’s effect on
production costs may fully manifest itself once the rest of the six S
Class variants enter production.
Courtesy of: US Daily Voice
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