Transparent Factory is the English name of an automobile production plant owned by German carmaker Volkswagen and opened in 2002. The original German name is Gläserne Manufaktur (glass factory).
The main purpose of the factory is the assembly of Volkswagen's luxury sedan, the Phaeton, and future Bentley models.
The Transparent Factory is situated in the city center of Dresden, the 800-year-old German baroque city known for its arts and craftsmanship. The factory’s walls are made almost competely of glass. Its floors are covered entirely in Canadian maple. And its layout is visitor-friendly, set up to receive 250 tourists per day. There are no smokestacks, no loud noises, and no toxic byproducts.
The transparent factory handles final assembly only. All the smelly, noisy operations, such as stamping and welding and then painting the steel body, take place in Zwickau. Painted bodies arrive at the factory by truck.
The other 1200 parts and 34 preassembled components are shipped to a remote logistics center and are transferred from there to the factory via trams that run on Dresden’s public transport tracks.
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