then why does ASK-MINI give me a estimated completion date thats 7 days from today?

the rep said its in stage 150 meaning it just started production today...so, if it takes one day to build the car, should it be done by end of today??

according to the sticky here it says one day to build the car..my MA said the same

 

The actual building of it is one day, but everything else that happens around the building is more like 7-8 days. Gathering of parts, painting, etc.

 

Mine has been in "Scheduled for Production" since April 21 with a consistent estimated completion date of May 9 -- that would be 19 days, if they were working 24/7.

Now to a previous post I made, there are 4 bank holidays in there. I also suspect they were down Easter weekend. There have been others here that noted that a couple of years ago, when the economy tanked and car sales went soft, MINI dropped the 24/7 schedule and laid a bunch of people off. Of course, with today's gas prices, they are "ramping up production" according to my MA. I have Googled about their schedule, but can't find anything - don't suppose most business publish their work schedules on the open Internet.

Best I can gather is to take with a grain of salt all of the estimates here about how long it takes. It enters this stage so they can lock down configuration changes so they can schedule all of the parts to be in the factory the day they actually build it. The status values it goes through once they do start appear to be
- Body Shop
- Paint Shop
- Assembly
- Quality Check

Then off to the boat...

 

A customer once asked me when his special order would arrive. I told him that normally we received shipments from that particular resource within a week to 10 days and against my counsel, he paid for it right then. One week to the day, the guy's mother comes in hotter than a $3.00 pistol. She had tracked down the UPS driver to find that there was no shipment for us that day and I had lied thru my teeth. I tried nicely to explain but she wouldn't have it. She wanted their money back and I wrote her a check for the full refund. She looked at it and sneered that they had given me CASH. I took the check, tore it in two and told her the product would arrive in a day or two. It arrived 10:00 next morning. Expectations have to be in line with reality to avoid unhappiness. Eight days falls well within 'a week to 10 days'. The world does not function on anybody's schedule.