Germany: SPIE takes on industrial maintenance for car factory in Mettingen

• SPIE maintaining industrial facilities and technical building equipment and ensuring utilities supply at the Mercedes-Benz Group car factory in Mettingen, Esslingen.
• In particular, the multi-technical service provider is helping the customer to optimise its facilities with the aim of achieving even better energy efficiency.
• Following a three-month start-up phase, work began in July 2023.
• SPIE has been working with the car manufacturer in areas relating to the production process for nearly 25 years.

Mettingen/Esslingen, 14 December 2023 – SPIE Deutschland & Zentraleuropa, the German subsidiary of SPIE, the independent European leader in multi-technical services in the areas of energy and communications, is responsible for industrial maintenance at the powertrain car factory in Mettingen, Esslingen, and is also supplying production utilities. The multi-technical service provider is working in areas relating very closely to the car manufacturer’s production process. Lightning-fast response times are therefore essential when it comes to troubleshooting, as is being on 24-hour on-call duty to prevent any production stoppage. Work started in July of this year.

Maximum plant availability in three-shift operation

SPIE Deutschland & Zentraleuropa carries out industrial maintenance work on facilities in the production buildings of the Mercedes-Benz Group, such as the process exhaust air systems, which improve air quality in the production areas. SPIE also supplies the site with production utilities, such as cooling and compressed air, and is responsible for technical building management in the production buildings, warehouses and offices. Accordingly, the teams under Jürgen Schmid, Branch Manager for Automotive Stuttgart in the Efficient Facilities operational division of SPIE, work very close to the production process, which entails a lot of responsibility and requires particularly precise coordination with the customer. “To make sure that we can preserve the value of the facilities and ensure plant availability in excess of 99%, we work on a three-shift system, depending on production, and keep in touch with customer needs at all times,” explains Jürgen Schmid.

This particular project presented an extra challenge in the form of the three-month start-up and ramp-up phase. “Fortunately, we have such highly skilled specialists with extensive experience in a number of areas, so that we were able to handle the transition to standard service with aplomb,” adds Jürgen Schmid.

Energy efficiency subject to ongoing review

SPIE has more than 30 employees managing a total gross floor area of around 500,000 square metres at the Mettingen, Esslingen, site.

Over the course of the project, the multi-technical service provider will continuously review the site’s energy consumption in the context of an agreed continuous improvement process (CIP). “We are constantly checking whether and how we could make our services even more bespoke and what tools we have at our disposal to cut down on faults and disruption, increase plant availability and reduce energy consumption. Using digital solutions and analyses is one of the ways we achieve this,” says Patrick Brommer, Project Team Manager at SPIE.

Rainer Hollang, Member of the Management Board of SPIE Deutschland & Zentraleuropa and Managing Director of SPIE Efficient Facilities GmbH, adds, “We’re delighted that we are able to bring our considerable expertise and wide range of in-house services to bear in order to ensure that production runs smoothly. This project is another successful application of our strategic orientation focusing on energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction, as expressed in our ‘Go! Green’ initiative.”