Volkswagen's Transparent Factory - Dresden, Germany

The building is located in the heart of Dresden, Germany. The factory's walls are made almost entirely of glass — over 290,000 square feet of it. Its floors are covered entirely in Canadian maple. And its layout is visitor-friendly, set up to receive, per day, 250 tourists (by advance reservation at 5 euros each), customers, or prospects (gratis). There are no smokestacks, no loud noises, and no toxic byproducts. The transparent factory handles final assembly only. All the smelly, noisy operations, such as stamping and welding and then painting the steel body, take place elsewhere. Painted bodies arrive at the factory by truck. The other 1200 parts and 34 preassembled components are shipped to a remote logistics center some three miles away and are transferred from there to the factory via trams that run on Dresden's public transport tracks.