For about $50,000, BMW may have begun solving a problem that will be plaguing many automakers: an aging work force. It's not just automakers that will be facing this problem, however, as populations worldwide are getting older; by 2020, the number of people over 65-years old is expected to increase to 16% in America, 21.6% in Germany, and over 27% in Japan.
In order to counteract this, BMW has taken it upon itself to figure out how to make its workplaces easier to work in and more efficient for older workers.
Instead of solving the "old worker" problem by forcibly retiring its workers after a certain age, BMW has decided to help its workers help themselves. An experiment was performed by aging one assembly line to the point where the average worker's age was 47-years old. This is significant, because 47 is the projected age of BMW workers by 2017.