In the competitive automotive industry, digital transformation is no longer optional—it’s essential for maintaining a competitive edge. Audi is leading this revolution with its groundbreaking Edge Cloud 4 Production (EC4P) initiative, bringing smart manufacturing directly to the shopfloor at their prestigious Boellinger Hoefe plant in Germany, home to the iconic Audi e-tron GT.
Through strategic collaboration with technology leaders Broadcom, Siemens, Codesys and Cisco, Audi is bridging the traditionally separate worlds of IT and OT (Operational Technology), creating a software-defined factory automation environment that redefines automotive manufacturing.
In this blog, we will explore some of the key technology challenges Audi faced with traditional infrastructure and how VMware Cloud Foundation Edge (VCF Edge) helped address those challenges, bringing them closer to their smart manufacturing goals.
The Challenges: Traditional Infrastructure Limitations
Before implementing their innovative solution, Audi faced several challenges:
- Infrastructure Costs: Separate Industrial PCs (IPCs) for MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems), computer vision, tool control, and predictive maintenance, along with PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) for real-time applications, resulted in hardware investments and ongoing maintenance expenses. Scaling required continuous addition of physical infrastructure.
- Limited Flexibility: Adding new features to existing PLCs after initial deployment proved challenging, and Audi needed greater flexibility to scale storage independently of compute resources.
- Cumbersome Deployment and Maintenance: Deploying or maintaining infrastructure required on-site technician visits, systems upgrades and patching took up to 30 minutes of downtime per IPC.
- Potential Security Vulnerabilities: Manual security patching required on-site visits, leaving systems vulnerable when patches were missed The lack of data immutability increased potential security risks.
The Solution: VMware Cloud Foundation Edge at the Factory Floor
To address these challenges, Audi deployed VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Edge. Here are the key highlights of how they modernized their factory floor infrastructure:
1. Infrastructure consolidation: VCF replaced individual industrial computers (IPCs) at the assembly lines with local servers running factory and worker support systems, providing a single virtualization platform . Audi deployed VCF for their production, running critical non-real-time workloads including Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Master PC (MPC), worker guidance applications, and car diagnostics, thus centralizing shopfloor applications running on different IPCs .
2. Centralized management: Software updates, deployments, and reconfigurations are now automated from a central console, eliminating the need for on-site visits.
3. Continuous monitoring: IT specialists can monitor application performance, balance loads, and optimize computing resources remotely.
4. Low-Latency data processing: Local servers act as data processing centers, handling extensive production data with minimal latency and distributing it to worker support systems, providing information to employees about which vehicle part to install next.
5. Resource optimization: Audi staff can select appropriately sized devices for each application or run multiple applications on servers or server clusters, and scale infrastructure as per business needs.
6. High availability: A persistent storage solution built on a stretched cluster topology across two availability zones ensures data availability and minimizes downtime from unplanned outages. With this approach, recovery times have been reduced to minutes, since the load can be shifted to other servers rather than identifying and replacing a defective industrial PC.
Audi’s future plans for EC4P include running real-time workloads, such as virtual PLCs (vPLCs), on VCF Edge clusters deployed at the production lines and bodyshops. These will control robots involved in manufacturing car parts, enhancing automation and further integrating IT and OT. Additionally, Audi plans to deploy VCF Edge clusters for running data analytics, IoT, and computer vision applications, further boosting its smart manufacturing capabilities.
The Results: Transformative Benefits Realized by Audi
The implementation of VMware Cloud Foundation Edge has delivered significant benefits across multiple dimensions:
Enhanced Agility and Scalability
- Faster reconfiguration of production lines to increase flexibility
- Independent scaling of compute and storage infrastructure
- Resource optimization through virtualization techniques
Substantial Cost Reduction
- Consolidated multiple IPCs onto redundant servers, reducing hardware footprint
- Lower hardware support and maintenance costs
- Decreased operating expenses for software updates, operating system changes and other IT-related expenses
Improved Operational Efficiency
- Optimized resource allocation across virtualized clients leading to faster application deployment
- Easy maintenance using proven IT management tools and remote management capabilities
- Real-time data analysis enabling swift decision-making at the edge
Strengthened Security Posture
- Reduced attack surface through elimination of industrial PC hardware and timely, automated security patching at scale
- Integrated high-performance snapshots for data protection
- Immutable snapshots for ransomware protection
- Quick rollback capabilities to minimize production interruptions
Minimized Downtime
- Reduced unplanned outage through built-in high availability
- Streamlined maintenance windows with automated updates
- Proactive issue identification through intelligent workload and network telemetry
Looking to the Future
Audi’s implementation of VMware Cloud Foundation Edge demonstrates how automotive manufacturers can leverage modern infrastructure to transform production environments, increase efficiency, and prepare for the future of smart manufacturing. By bridging IT and OT with a software-defined approach, Audi has created a blueprint for the intelligent factory of tomorrow.
Resources:
To learn more about VCF Edge, please check out the resources below:
- VMware Cloud Foundation Edge- Datasheet
- VMware Cloud Foundation Edge- Design Considerations Whitepaper
- VMware Cloud Foundation Website
- VMware Cloud Foundation Blogs
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