# Figure published the results of an 11-month humanoid deployment at BMW Spartanburg: one station, sheet-metal loading, 1,250+ hours of runtime and 90,000+ parts

Page: https://flyvolo.ai/en/changes/ev-20251119-assembly-line-worker-2
Date: 2025-11-19 · Stage: Deployment
Can this record move a task judgement? yes
Occupation: https://flyvolo.ai/en/careers/assembly-line-worker

## Scope

Vendor-published, and deliberately narrow: one use case (picking sheet-metal parts from racks and placing them on a welding fixture) at one plant, on a 10-hour weekday shift. 1,250 hours of runtime over eleven months is a fraction of one person's working year, and the piece is written as a retirement note — Figure 02 has gone back to headquarters and is being replaced by Figure 03. Figure names its own hardware failure point, the forearm. BMW's own headcount is not mentioned anywhere.

## Source

- Figure — https://www.figure.ai/news/production-at-bmw (primary source)

## What this means

A humanoid ran a real station on a real line, on weekday shifts, for eleven months — that is a different claim from a demo video, and it comes with published runtime and part counts. What it standardises is the station: the robot needs the parts presented the same way every time, so the work around it gets re-engineered to suit it, and that re-engineering is what actually moves jobs.

## What it does not show yet

One station is not a line. Figure gives runtime and part counts but no cost per part, no comparison against the fixed industrial arms that already do most of this work, and no statement from BMW about staffing. The robot was retired at the end of the run, and its most-cited failure point was a joint it needs to do the job at all — which is the honest state of humanoids on a factory floor in 2025.

## How to verify it yourself

Look at your own plant for the tell that matters: whether anyone is re-presenting parts for a machine — jigs, fixed orientations, new racks — rather than whether a humanoid has appeared. That re-engineering precedes the robot by a year or more and is visible to you long before any announcement. Then ask maintenance how many hours a week the newest cell is down; runtime, not capability, is what decides whether it stays.


More: https://flyvolo.ai/llms.txt