The BMW Group signed an agreement with car producer Magna Steyr covering the development and production of the new BMW X3. Never before had an automobile manufacturer assigned such a large-scale project to a single partner in the automotive supply industry.
Magna Steyr normally uses steel boxes as their standard packaging.The challenge was to find an effective solution for handling materials from various suppliers from all over Europe to Magna Steyr’s facilities in Graz, Austria. Today, most components produced by the supplier are sequenced into the assembly line for a specific vehicle.
Up to 60% of the finished vehicle’s value comes from the component suppliers. The responsibility for delivering vehicles on time, lies to a large degree with the component supply chain since parts are not stored at the vehicle production plant. In this way, storage boxes play a large part in the automotive industry.
Magna Steyr opted for partly replacing the steel boxes by foldable plastic containers and selected the Magnum Foldable Large Containers of Schoeller Allibert. The result was a considerable reduction of transport costs for handling empty containers. In addition, using plastic instead of steel boxes substantially reduced quality claims, the parts being delivered without damage.