Pursuits
Mercedes Boots Robots From the Production Line
- Mercedes races Audi, BMW to gain edge in changing car market
- More assembly workers safeguard future, production chief says
A Mercedes-Benz S-Class on the assembly line at the company’s factory in Sindelfingen, Germany.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Mercedes-Benz offers the S-Class sedan with a growing array of options such as carbon-fiber trim, heated and cooled cupholders and four types of caps for the tire valves, and the carmaker’s robots can’t keep up.
With customization key to wooing modern consumers, the flexibility and dexterity of human workers is reclaiming space on Mercedes’s assembly lines. That bucks a trend that has given machines the upper hand over manpower since legendary U.S. railroad worker John Henry died trying to best a motorized hammer more than a century ago.