Welcome to Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, U.S.A., and the manufacturing facility where the GLE SUV,  GL SUV, and the GLE Coupe are built. Everything is under one roof… from Body, Paint, and Assembly shops to Administration and Shipping. This unity helps to emphasize the importance of teamwork and to foster Team Member communication and facilitate the consistent, incomparable quality inherent in manufacture of a Mercedes-Benz vehicle.

Each model is built “just-in-time,” a manufacturing method based on the idea that stockpiling large amounts of inventory is not only inefficient but unnecessary. In fact, in the assembly shop, the target is to have only 2 hours worth of inventory stocked (approximately 3 hours in the body shop) at any given time for the production line. When additional inventory is needed, our automated system places an order for replenishment and it’s delivered almost immediately.

The manufacturing process for each model begins in the Body Shop where the components that comprise the metal body are welded together. Then, from the ultra-clean Paint Shop, the painted body finishes its journey in Assembly where it becomes a new Mercedes-Benz and is made ready for shipping. From beginning to end, our vehicles are created with style, functionality, and superior quality.

To make this process possible, the MBUSI Energy Center provides and monitors the power required to produce the vehicles. Team Members in the Energy Center work around the clock in three shifts to make sure that we have all the electricity, natural gas, compressed air, and various waters used in the manufacturing process. The energy required at full production is approximately 48 million watts—or roughly similar to the typical energy needs of 9,600 single-family homes.

THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT MBUSI:

• MBUSI has been located in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama since 1995
• MBUSI is the first large Mercedes-Benz production plant outside Germany
• MBUSI is the first major automotive manufacturing location in the State of Alabama – serving as the catalyst for additional OEM, automotive suppliers, and supporting businesses to come to the area
• MBUSI has more than 6,300 employees with an estimated additional 10,000 indirect jobs at suppliers and service providers in the region
• MBUSI has, so far, invested more than $6 billion
• MBUSI is investing an additional $1 billion to start production of electric passenger cars, expand the plant’s logistics activities, and to build a battery factory
• the MBUSI Consolidation Center started operating in 2019
• construction activities for the battery factory started at the end of 2018; the battery factory will go into operation at the beginning of the next decade;
• future battery production will be part of the global network of Mercedes-Benz Cars, both for the local market and for export
• MBUSI builds the GLS, GLE, GLE Coupe, Maybach Mercedes GLS, Mercedes EQE SUV, and Mercedes EQS SUV exclusively for the world market
• MBUSI is the second largest automotive exporter in the U.S.
• around two thirds of our SUVs produced at MBUSI are being exported to almost every country in the world
• More than 4 million vehicles were built since 1997
• There are almost 200 U.S.-based suppliers with localization rate continually increasing.