State of the art production, storing and distribution facilities for highest product quality

High above Dietenhofen (close to Nuremberg, Germany) the PLAYMOBIL production site sits on an area of more than 250,000 square meters of company owned land. The production and storage buildings erected in 1969 have been expanded over the past decades, at immense cost, to adapt them to current requirements. The enclosed area has grown to roughly 80,000 square meters and approximately 900 people work here.

The manufacturing process starts at 17 silos for plastic granulate with a capacity of approximately 65 metric tons each. The annual raw material requirement – mainly ABS and PS – is 15,000 metric tons. The next station is the injection molding shop, one of the largest in Europe. In-house, there are 330 state-of-the-art injection molding machines in various sizes, among them two-, three- and four-color machines, with many of the microprocessor-controlled machines being automatically supplied with plastic material by a modern conveying pipe system.

The employees at the PLAYMOBIL injection shop work around the clock in three shifts. Every day about 6 million parts are made. Many machines are equipped with handling devices which separate the parts from each other and remove them from the mold. Wastes is collected and re-used with new material without quality loss.

In the assembly department there are technically optimized packing machines which are programmed to the box sizes they are handling. Weighing systems at the end of each packing line ensure that even boxes with minimal weight differences are sorted out. These weight checks together with those in the pre-production process reduce the possibility of missing items in an original box to almost zero. On average, roughly 65,000 PLAYMOBIL sets are produced every day.

The capacity of the fully automatic high-rack warehouse built in 1979 was doubled in size in 1992 and again in 2005. With a length of 140 meters, a height of 30 meters or 40 meters respectively and a width of 80 meters, it can now hold 52,000 pallets, with a volume of 1.8 cubic meters each. This warehouse holds components as well as completed PLAYMOBIL play sets.

The heart of the company is the subterranean mold warehouse protected by special security installations. The roughly 8,000 steel injection molds necessary for the production of PLAYMOBIL represent a value exceeding of approx. 180 million €.

For quality and safety reasons, ultrasonic welding is increasingly used for fixed bonds. Additionally, many items are tampon printed.

Some time ago, a Tech Lab with a testing laboratory for analytical tests was installed. Here the base for production processes in plastic material processing is worked out. The motto “Greatest safety for children“ is imperative at PLAYMOBIL.

All manufacturing processes are computer-controlled. From 30 loading bays, PLAYMOBIL toys start their journey around the world.

The first floor of PLAYMOBIL headquarters, houses management and work preparation offices, which are equipped with the most modern communication tools available.

The Brandstätter Group has another large, high-tech production site on the Mediterranean island of Malta where primarily Playmobil figures and the Playmobil 1.2.3 line for toddlers is produced. Further plants are located in Spain and in the Czech Republic.

January 2009