VW Beetle In Kit Form, 70 Years Of Volkswagen CKD Export Boxes

VW Beetle In Kit Form, 70 Years Of Volkswagen CKD Export Boxes

VW have been exporting CKD kits for 70 years, starting with the Volkswagen Beetle. The Completely Knocked Down kit is a whole car broken down into a series of parts to assemble. Just like a model kit, only bigger.

Since 1950 Volkswagen have been supplying kits to other countries. This was to get VW products into emerging markets and grow global production. Some 25,000 overseas containers are shipped to 10 countries and 27 locations every year. This equates to about 200 million vehicles that have been exported to date.

These days the used of CKD kits is a way of ensuring supply to Volkswagen’s global production network. This plays a key role in sales. Some 3 million further vehicles or parts are added every year to this process.

VW have been exporting CKD kits for 70 years, starting with the Volkswagen Beetle. The Completely Knocked Down kit is a whole car broken down into a series of parts to assemble. Just like a model kit, only bigger.

Since 1950 Volkswagen have been supplying kits to other countries. This was to get VW products into emerging markets and grow global production. Some 25,000 overseas containers are shipped to 10 countries and 27 locations every year. This equates to about 200 million vehicles that have been exported to date.

These days the used of CKD kits is a way of ensuring supply to Volkswagen’s global production network. This plays a key role in sales. Some 3 million further vehicles or parts are added every year to this process.

Of course, the first vehicle to be assembled from a box of parts was the legendary Beetle. It isn’t always viable to build a complete car factory in some countries. Volumes may not be high enough for the country. The tooling costs could be too high. Not to mention customs and import regulations.

The first Beetle kit in 1950 was delivered to be assembled in Ireland. Following this, boxes started arriving in South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Central and South America are synonymous with the Beetle and the volumes were quite substantial. Mexico even ended up exporting the Beetle back to Europe when production ended in Germany.

If you’ve ever been to Central or South America, you’ll have seen the amount of them that are there. Still on the road even today. Mind you, they did make them up to 2003 as a 2004 model in Mexico.  In Brazil they had a gap from 1986 until 1993 and managed to get to make them up to 1997.

The largest of the CKD plants is located in South Africa. Currently the Polo for all right-hand-drive markets is assembled there. Just like the Beetle, European models are produced outside of Germany. There are further plants located in the USA, China, Brazil, Argentina, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

VW Beetle In Kit Form, 70 Years Of Volkswagen CKD Export Boxes

Of course, the first vehicle to be assembled from a box of parts was the legendary Beetle. It isn’t always viable to build a complete car factory in some countries. Volumes may not be high enough for the country. The tooling costs could be too high. Not to mention customs and import regulations.

The first Beetle kit in 1950 was delivered to be assembled in Ireland. Following this, boxes started arriving in South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Central and South America are synonymous with the Beetle and the volumes were quite substantial. Mexico even ended up exporting the Beetle back to Europe when production ended in Germany.

If you’ve ever been to Central or South America, you’ll have seen the amount of them that are there. Still on the road even today. Mind you, they did make them up to 2003 as a 2004 model in Mexico. In Brazil they had a gap from 1986 until 1993 and managed to get to make them up to 1997.

The largest of the CKD plants is located in South Africa. Currently the Polo for all right-hand-drive markets is assembled there. Just like the Beetle, European models are produced outside of Germany. There are further plants located in the USA, China, Brazil, Argentina, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

VW Beetle In Kit Form, 70 Years Of Volkswagen CKD Export Boxes
Even though the Beetle was made all over the world, Wolfsburg remained the nerve centre.
 
Individual plants ordered the kits directly from VW centrally in Wolfsburg. Supply management teams ensures that the vehicle parts are available from all the European plants and suppliers. All these parts are bundled and packaged at one of eight distribution centres. They are loaded into containers and shipped by sea, rail or air to where they are assembled.
 
There are distribution centres in Wolfsburg, Salzgitter and Kassel. Further locations are Duisburg, Emden, Fallersleben, Wilhelmshaven and Martorell (Spain). Today these eight packaging centres ship a total of about 1.7 million cubic meters of goods every year. Corresponding to about 25,000 overseas containers.
 
It takes about eight weeks from the receipt of an order before the vehicle arrives in the destination country. Some 90 different vehicle projects of overseas plants are supplied via CKD from Europe.

Back at the start in 1970, 50 years ago, the Beetle was packed in boxes by hand. These days it’s gone a bit higher tech. Robotic systems support the packing and loading at the distributions centres. Special grippers are used that allow them to pick up the vehicle parts, where originally it would have been the hands of an operator. Classic vehicle parts are heavy enough, but modern cars are substantially larger and can weight some 50 – 100% more.

Of course, artificial intelligence now plays a part. Bots read the emails and react, dealing with multiple consignments and supplier communications. It even detects the language and interprets it using natural language processing (NLP). SAP software is used to manage production and these bots communicate directly with it.

Burkhard Hüsken, Head of CKD of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand: “We used to need only one or two faxes per week for coordination with the overseas plants. Nowadays, we work with our production plants on a real-time basis and manage about 9,000 part numbers for worldwide shipment. The tasks of our employees have changed fundamentally. They are no longer simply box packers but are now logistics data experts.

Due to my time in Automotive I’ve been to car plants and seen how some of this works. I’ve spent time in Mexico and seen hundreds of Beetles and even in Peru rode in a Beetle taxi.

The CKD these days it’s a bit like mail ordering something from Amazon. I wouldn’t mind ordering a whole VW Beetle, I think it would have to be a Mexican one though.

Thanks to VW for the images.

I found a few examples to photgraph when in Mexico City one time. I even found a crochet one in the modern art museum. You can see the Facebook gallery here.

Simon

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