Digital manufacturing underway at BMW’s future manufacturing plant

BMW Group has taken manufacturing unit planning to new heights – setting the newest milestone within the digitalisation of automotive manufacturing.

Greater than two years earlier than the official launch of collection manufacturing, car manufacturing is already underway sooner or later plant Debrecen – just about, a minimum of, as Debrecen is the BMW Group’s first facility to be deliberate and validated fully just about.

The planning idea was realised in collaboration with its associate NVIDIA. The longer term plant Debrecen is scheduled to open in 2025. Building has simply begun, and the brand new facility is scheduled to supply the BMW Group’s subsequent technology of all-electric fashions: the Neue Klasse.

BMW Group is taking a digital-first strategy to validate and optimise advanced manufacturing techniques throughout its manufacturing community utilizing NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, a platform for constructing and working 3D industrial metaverse functions, to run real-time digital twin simulations to optimise layouts, robotics, and logistic techniques just about. Omniverse shall be prolonged throughout the BMW product community around the globe.

“Virtualisation and synthetic intelligence are accelerating and refining our planning. With the assorted planning techniques consolidated inside a digital twin, our groups around the globe can now work collectively in real-time and make choices quicker and on a extra strong basis,” Milan Nedeljković, BMW AG Board Member for Manufacturing, defined. “This makes us a lot faster and extra environment friendly and saves on prices as nicely.”

“Digitalisation is shifting quickest within the automotive business and BMW has been a frontrunner in advancing this imaginative and prescient,” mentioned Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “We’re partnering carefully with BMW, utilizing NVIDIA Omniverse to assist streamline their manufacturing processes, improve collaboration, and additional effectivity. Our collaboration will proceed to push the frontiers of digital integration for the following technology of good, linked factories around the globe.”

In a joint demo on the NVIDIA GTC, a worldwide convention for the period of AI and the Metaverse, Milan Nedeljković took Huang on a digital planning session for the brand new physique store. Nedeljković described the real-time collaboration between the completely different BMW Group planning departments and their companions as a “revolution in manufacturing unit planning”, delivered on NVIDIA’s Omniverse – which had enabled the primary digital begin of manufacturing.

Engineering and planning specialists from the 2 firms, each leaders of their respective fields labored, in shut collaboration to assist BMW construct Omniverse functions that meet the BMW Group’s particular necessities. The digital planning strategy for the brand new car plant is now thought of a blueprint for all future planning processes on the BMW Group.

Digital planning facilitates world collaboration – rollout begins finish of March

NVIDIA Omniverse makes collaboration throughout websites and time zones simpler and helps the planning and design of buildings, manufacturing techniques and processes at a wholly new technological stage. It really works as a ‘cockpit’, providing fast, quick access to the digital planning worlds of BMW. On the finish of this month, Omniverse, which is each cloud-based and cloud-agnostic, shall be accessible to BMW specialists in numerous applied sciences and planning departments.

Subsequent milestone within the BMW iFACTORY

Constant digital planning of extremely advanced car manufacturing processes represents the BMW Group’s subsequent vital step within the transformation to the BMW iFACTORY. First launched in early 2022, the idea of the iFACTORY is described by Nedeljković as “our masterplan for the automotive manufacturing of tomorrow”.

Primarily based on a very new car structure, the Neue Klasse heralds the elemental transformation of manufacturing to the BMW iFACTORY. It started in 2020, when all the BMW Group’s car and engine crops have been 3D-scanned. Since November of that 12 months, greater than seven million sq. metres of indoor and 15 million sq. metres of out of doors manufacturing house have been scanned. Subsequent modifications may be built-in into the digital world with a re-scan, to make sure the accessible information is at all times updated.

In the meantime, digital planning is below approach for the roughly 1.4km2 manufacturing corridor for the Neue Klasse in Debrecen, the place the success of the digital begin of manufacturing is a testomony to the excessive requirements that may be achieved via the digitalisation of the planning course of. NVIDIA Omniverse permits manufacturing specialists to make use of dwell information each in-house and with suppliers on the detailed planning and optimisation of processes and particular person techniques – with out compatibility points. It makes construction and facility information straightforward to retrieve and combine with tools and meeting line information. Sooner or later objects and half numbers for manufacturing supplies shall be accessible as nicely. What’s extra, format choices – as an example for robots in work cells, or for the assorted areas of logistics – may be performed via in real-time, photorealistic simulations and tailored as required. And with Omniverse, any modifications are evaluated, validated, and carried out in real-time. The platform additionally will enable suppliers to be concerned in decision-making and integrates the tried-and-tested design and planning instruments that BMW has been utilizing thus far. These are made by numerous producers and embrace Bentley Programs MicroStation for format planning, ipolog for logistics planning, Siemens Course of Simulate, Dassault Systemes CATIA for car design and Autodesk Revit for constructing planning, with extra instruments to comply with.

Over time all of the related product, course of, high quality, and value information may also regularly be accessible in Omniverse alongside the event, planning and manufacturing processes. There may also be additional developments to the platform, that are anticipated to incorporate ‘invisible’ processes such because the consumption of vitality and assets.

Omniverse will improve digital operations as nicely – an important stage that’s already being tackled by BMW Group and NVIDIA groups. Sooner or later, this may enable operational faults to be localised in a matter of seconds and thus stop longer manufacturing downtimes. It’s also an vital step in direction of, for instance, integrating and automating digital commissioning of recent techniques right into a steady planning course of.

There’s additionally loads of different evaluation editorial at IoT Insider’s sister publication, Digital Specifier. And you may at all times add to the dialogue at our feedback part beneath or on our LinkedIn web page right here.

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