Increasing electrification of the vehicle as well as the demands of increased connectivity presents automotive manufacturers with formidable challenges. Automakers and suppliers likely will encounter three practices that will influence how they develop and manufacture highly connected vehicles and future e-mobility platforms: 1) hierarchical production processes in fixed footprints that do not share data freely; 2) lack of real-time, in-line quality inspection and correction processes for complex miniaturized electronic components; and 3) floor to enterprise resource and execution systems that can collect, analyze and respond to rapidly changing production needs.
While the automotive manufacturing industry has implemented sensors, robotics and computerized automation for decades, these systems largely are organized in a hierarchical fashion within individual data silos, and often in a closed, hard-wired network environment largely disconnected from IT and enterprise service-based networks. To complicate matters, automotive and industrial standard manufacturing equipment is still largely constrained by a large installed base of legacy workflow, equipment and standards.
This paper explores some possible directions how automakers and suppliers will need to change and what considerations they will need to account for with respect to data into order to manufacture the next generation of connected and electrified vehicles.
