Under the circumstances, you might call it the Ultimate Communications Machine. It’s Sprint Mobile Integration, and it is doing some very good things for BMW Manufacturing, the North American manufacturing arm of the famed German automaker.

We recently announced that BMW Manufacturing is using Mobile Integration at the auto plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The company had been looking to migrate from its legacy PBX system, and wanted to combine communications services while at the same time reducing the number of devices that mobile employees had to deal with.

Mobile Integration, of course, extends the corporate network features and functionality to mobile devices, enabling employees to be equally productive pretty much wherever they may be. In BMW Manufacturing’s case, that mobility is extremely important, especially to frequently-mobile engineering and technical people.

With the call control features of Mobile Integration, BMW Manufacturing is able to establish profiles and define certain phone restrictions. For example, some users may be limited to time-of-day access or to intra-company calls on their mobile device. These kinds of management controls are easily enabled, since the signaling taking place between the BMW PBX and the Sprint network allows centralization of all management, with changes quickly applied to one or many types of devices, whenever needed.

Mobile Integration also helps to reduce trunk usage, with all calls to and from mobile or wired devices – including internal conferencing and overseas calls – intra-company calls. Also, employees benefit from a single voice mailbox, five-digit internal dialing, and the ability to be reached, via a single phone number, by internal or external callers.

BMW Manufacturing’s new mobile strategy has already achieved its goals of reducing the number of desk sets and leveraging its existing Sprint network infrastructure to enable employee communications through a single device. In many cases, all of its other communications – including Land Mobile Radio, paging, text messaging, and automated system alerting – have also been consolidated onto the one device.

In an incredibly competitive market – true even among high-end automotive brands – cost savings and improved productivity are vital. BMW Manufacturing has definitely moved into the communications fast lane.