In June, a group of Year 12 Business Studies students had a fantastic opportunity to explore the more practical aspects of business with a visit to the BMW Mini plant in Oxford. One of our students, Daniel, picks up the story…

Our recent trip to the Mini car factory was both fun and interesting. It was planned to help us see how the business ideas we learned in class are used in real life. Watching how everything worked in the factory helped us understand topics like production, stock control, and how a business runs smoothly.

One of the best parts of the trip was the final assembly line. The tour guide, who had worked for Mini in various jobs for 40 years, shared a lot of useful and detailed information. It was my first time visiting a car factory, so everything felt new and exciting. It was really cool to see how all the machines and people worked together to build the cars.

I learned that the factory uses Just In Time (JIT) delivery. This means they only get parts when they need them, so they don’t have to store a lot of extra stock. The factory only keeps about 48 hours’ worth of parts, which helps save space and money, but this requires up to 70 deliveries per day.

There were also some surprising facts. I was shocked to hear that BMW makes around 800 cars a day at the factory! They used to make about 1,200 a day before tariffs (extra taxes on trading with other countries) were added so orders were cancelled. This showed how quickly outside influences can change how a business performs.

Overall, the trip was a great way to see how what we learn in school connects to the real world. It helped me understand business in a clearer and more exciting way.

Meanwhile we had some briefer comments from other students:

It was so impressive to be able to go to a factory where it was open and we could see what was happening and how the process works – we couldn’t do that in our country as it’s all a secret.

Hey this is really interesting – thanks for putting it together for us Sarah!

And finally:

That was epic!