Marc Geckeler (Industrial Cloud Alliance Lead, Volkswagen) and Dirk Voigt (Industrial Cloud Alliance Lead, Volkswagen) together with Alan Southall (Head of Digital Production Platform, AWS) were able to share insights of the Industrial Cloud journey with the interested audience at the IOT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona.
You are wondering what the IOT Solutions World Congress is? An event that showcases the game-changing solutions and technologies that are disrupting and transforming the industry and celebrates the business. Next to exhibitions and keynotes there was also a start-up tournament.
The Industrial Cloud keynote started with a brief overview of the industry’s challenges regarding the high production pressure and efficiency targets, and how the strategic partnership between Volkswagen and AWS emerged to jointly tackle these challenges. Afterwards, the speakers dived deeper into the question ‘how to leverage the potential of the Industrial Cloud?’
In this part of the presentation, they covered learnings from the past two years and the adjustments to the collaboration strategy which evolved from lessons learned, how the Industrial Cloud emerged from a heterogeneous IT landscape and data silos to microservices and a layer architecture forming a holistic approach for all plants connected to the Industrial Cloud. It also became clear that the approach to rollout many more Use Cases and supply the plants with the digital solutions they need is the right strategy to solve common challenges in production. Each site can obtain applications directly from the Industrial Cloud and thus, produce more efficiently and in a more sustainable way.
As examples for Use Cases that accelerate sustainability in the plants, the Road Test Predictor from Amorph Systems as well as the Call Rocker from MHP and the Digital Twin from NavVis were presented.
How do the Use Cases bring Volkswagen closer to reaching its sustainability goals?
The Road Test Predictor is a solution that allows to decide which vehicles should be tested and which can bypass the road test. It thus leads to significant time and cost savings as well es less emissions due to less road tests executed. It thereby increases productivity and brings production closer to carbon neutrality.
The Call Rocker is a solution that provides logisticians with a real-time overview of supply requirements to increase process efficiency and reliability. Material replenishment is triggered via sensors working in various assembly line supply layouts. As a result, production stops are avoided while resources are being saved, error rates are minimized, and material overloads are avoided.
The Digital Twin is a tool that delivers a combination of 360° images and 3D scan data to deliver a digital copy of buildings, e. g. plants. The benefit is that only one service ca operate for all companies of the Volkswagen Group reducing travel cost tremendously while at the same time decreasing CO2 emissions due to international accessibility.
Road Test Predictor, Call Rocker and Digital Twin are just three of many Use Cases that are already used in various plants worldwide and help to reduce emissions and save resources every day.
The keynote ended with a strong statement: Production and logistics are playing a crucial role in becoming more efficient and sustainable. The Industrial Cloud is an important lever for this. By consistently connecting Volkswagen’s sites and their suppliers, the Volkswagen Group will become faster, increase transparency and efficiency while at the same time decreasing waste and saving resources.