Last year Volkswagen had launched its industrial cloud to integrate 122 manufacturing units across the worldwide. The industrial cloud which was hosted in AWS platform and implemented by Siemens, is now being extended to its 1500+ suppliers and partners. A glimpse of scale of operations which will move to industrial cloud globally- Volkswagen Group manufacturing units uses 200 million parts per day, which is transported by 18000 trucks and 7700 ships.
Volkswagen, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and integration partner Siemens, is opening up the Industrial Cloud to other manufacturing and technology companies. Partner companies will connect with Volkswagen plants through this industrial cloud. They may also contribute their own software applications for optimizing production processes to the Industrial Cloud. This way, a rapidly growing range of industrial software applications for Volkswagen’s plants are going to be created. Each location will be ready to obtain applications for its machinery, tools, and equipment direct from the Industrial Cloud to optimize production (app store approach).
Nihar Patel, Executive Vice President New Business Development at Volkswagen AG, in an interview with Sarah Cooper, General Manager of IoT Solutions at Amazon Web Services, highlighted the benefits- “The data that we integrate with the Industrial Cloud creates more efficiency through intelligent algorithms and software applications. For example, one of the eleven pioneering partners has developed an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to optimize the use of driverless transport systems. Another company has an application that can be used to simulate the maintenance intervals of machines. The examples show: As the number of partners grows, so does the range of solutions our plants can draw on. The Industrial Cloud is not a closed club. We are open to cooperation – with our suppliers and any other company that wants to contribute solutions and/or consume them. “
The Volkswagen Group expects significant efficiency and productivity gains at its plants. The partner companies will be able to scale and further develop their applications in one of the world’s largest automobile production networks. This will also enable them to optimize their own processes and products. As a primary step, eleven pioneering international companies, ABB, ASCon Systems, BearingPoint, Celonis, Dürr, GROB-WERKE, MHP, NavVis, SYNAOS, Teradata and WAGO, are going to be joining the Industrial Cloud.
In the future, the Industrial Cloud will include all Volkswagen’s factories throughout the world and its global supply chain and can facilitate data interchange between systems and plants. The system is predicated on AWS technologies within the fields of the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, data analytics, and computing services, which are extended specifically to satisfy the requirements of Volkswagen and the automotive industry.
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