Manfred Erlacher, President and CEO of BMW Manufacturing in Greer, will assume new responsibilities as the Managing Director of BMW Plant Regensburg.
Knudt Flor, responsible for BMW Group Corporate Quality, will take over at the Greer plant on Dec. 1.
Succeeding Erlacher will be Knudt Flor, currently responsible for BMW Group Corporate Quality. The handover takes place Dec. 1.
Under Erlacher’s leadership, production at the Greer plant has grown from nearly 300,000 units per year to over 400,000 units per year, making the factory the largest BMW plant in the world by volume.
The Greer plant also launched several vehicles during Erlacher’s three years, including the all-new BMW X4, BMW X3 LCI, second-generation BMW X6, BMW X5 M and X6 M, and the BMW X5 xDrive40e, Greer’s first plug-in hybrid vehicle.
The new president of BMW Manufacturing will be Knut Flor, a 28-year veteran with the BMW Group. Flor has served in several roles in Quality Assurance and Quality Management within the company. From 1998 – 2000, he worked at the Greer plant as Quality Assurance of Car Assembly and Purchased Parts. He has also been Vice President of Production at BMW Plant Munich, Director of BMW Plant Rosslyn in South Africa, and Senior Vice President of Technology at BMW Brilliance Automotive Joint Venture in Shenyang, China.
Most recently, Flor served as Senior Vice President of Quality Management for the BMW Group. BMW Greer is undergoing a $1 billion expansion that includes construction and tooling of a new 1.2 million square-foot body shop, a 200,000 square-foot expansion of X5/X6 Assembly, and a 100,000 square-foot addition to Logistics.
At the end of 2016, production capacity will increase to 450,000 units per year and the plant will have 8,800 jobs on site.