Bosch's Survival Plan

A half-dozen young, mostly male engineers sit in a bright, open office digging through a mountain of code. Multi-monitor work stations sit on desks strewn with laptops, tablets, and headphones. This is not a tech startup, however. Today these factory workers are culling immediate production inefficiencies and developing systems that they hope will, by next year, allow the factory's machines to diagnose their own problems, order replacement parts, and anticipate necessary maintenance hours or even weeks in advance. Through a bank of large windows opening from the computer room onto the shop floor, row after row of machines hum a percussive melody as they turn out small parts--fuel injection nozzles, electronic safety control systems, mechanical brake systems--destined for car companies including BMW, Volkswagen, and Tesla.