Audi, the iconic premium automotive brand within the Volkswagen Group, set out to radically modernize its production landscape. The goal: replace all physical compute devices on the shop floor, such as Industrial PCs and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), with a unified, software-defined infrastructure. This bold move aimed to improve cost efficiency, system availability, security, and operational flexibility.
To bring this vision to life, Audi partnered early with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Professional Services, leveraging their expertise to co-create and design a strategic solution aligned with Audi’s long-term manufacturing goals.
Understanding the problem before designing the solution
From the beginning, Audi chose to involve VCF Professional Services during the ideation phase, not just implementation. Rather than fulfilling a narrowly scoped technology request, Broadcom conducted in-depth workshops to understand Audi’s core business challenges.
Through these collaborative sessions, the team identified a critical issue: a decentralized estate of thousands of Industry PCs powering Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs). This fragmentation complicated deployment, maintenance, and lifecycle management.
The joint team redefined the problem and co-created a VCF-based solution focused on centralizing, virtualizing, and standardizing Audi’s factory compute infrastructure. What emerged was not just an HMI modernization strategy, but a foundational platform for future-ready manufacturing, including the virtualization of PLCs and broader automation capabilities.
From vision to execution: a repeatable factory blueprint
VCF Professional Services worked closely with Audi’s production teams to architect, deploy, and validate the solution in a real-world environment. The result: a fully integrated VCF private cloud implementation that aligns seamlessly with Audi’s IT and OT ecosystems.
One of the project’s major deliverables was a standardized, location-agnostic blueprint: a comprehensive design and project template that Audi can now reuse across global facilities. This blueprint includes architecture diagrams, deployment checklists, and partner orchestration guidelines.
Tangible business impact, fast
Audi’s first production workloads were running within seven months, with the first vehicles being built on the new software-defined shop floor shortly after. Within a year, a second factory went live using the blueprint with a partner, validating the repeatability and scalability of the solution.
The third milestone was the realization of Audi’s broader vision: delivering next-generation IT-based factory automation through a unified, software-powered platform for virtualized PLCs. This transformation has already improved operations by enabling virtualized workload management, seamless online updates, and near-zero downtime for maintenance activities.
With VMware Cloud Foundation as the backbone and Professional Services as the strategic enabler, Audi is well positioned to solve tomorrow’s manufacturing challenges today.
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To learn more, visit VMware Cloud Foundation Services and Lifecycle Support.
