Gerd Walker, head of production and logistics at Audi AG, said in an interview with Expansion that the conveyor belts, essential in the production lines, are reaching their limits more and more, because being a rigid and sequential process, variables, such as breaks in supply chains they are difficult to master.
The company is launching a pilot project at the Ingolstadt plant, called “modular assembly”, which replaces the traditional conveyor belt with specific processes that are carried out in independent stations, depending on the supplies available and what is needed. need to produce.
In this complex, where nearly 45,000 people work, the assembly plant produces the Q3, A3, A4 and A5 models. The process begins with the assembly of interior doors, through the programming and implementation of automated guided vehicles, in charge of taking the supplies to the specific place where they will be incorporated into the production stage.
For example, the area destined for this assembly has eight stations; in one of them, cables and lighting elements are installed. Consequently, the jobs that do not need to stop in this space, either because there are no more inputs – for example, chips – or because that particular model will not have a certain device, go to the next station.
If the jobs accumulate at one station, the guided vehicles will take the supplies to the next one, with the shortest waiting time possible, since the job configuration is adjusted cyclically. This integrated logistics system is expected to increase efficiency by up to 20%.
Wolfgang Kern, project manager at Audi’s production lab, notes that the initiative is generating valuable insights by allowing engineers to derive other applications. He adds that the next step is to take these processes to a larger scale and to other components of the car, such as dashboards or suspensions.
“Unplugging the stations makes it possible to reschedule things without much effort. Thanks to hardware flexible – such as automated guided vehicles – it is often only necessary to adjust the software. Stations can be adapted to products and demand more easily, compared to a conveyor belt,” he adds.
The modular assembly pilot program will continue to be implemented throughout this year, with the intention of take it to other plants between 2023 and 2026and be able to transfer it to its other factories, such as the one in Jose Chiapa, in Pueblawhere the Q5 SUV is produced for the whole world.