Less than 3 months production beat from 15JPH to 50JPH, one minute there is a new vehicle off the line, fuel vehicle, electric vehicle line production, support customer customization, 100% automated production, production quality “zero” defects, short process “zero” inventory, the whole process of low energy consumption, “zero” emissions… This is not the car factory of the future, but the portrayal of the Chery intelligent network super factory that has been officially put into production.

In this factory, mass customization has become a reality, the digitalization of the whole process has been landed, and manufacturing intelligence and management transparency have created benefits. In the process of building this gigafactory, Rockwell Automation’s digital innovation solution, FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, plays a central hub role, allowing the industrial Internet to truly empower the automotive industry to move towards high-quality development.

In the era of change, manufacturing technology forges the core competitiveness of car enterprises

With the arrival of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and consumption upgrading, the automobile industry with a history of more than 140 years is facing subversive changes. The “new four modernizations” of automobiles with the core of “electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing” are coming. In order to take the initiative to embrace the changes of The Times, traditional car companies have begun to comprehensively layout “new growth points” such as new energy, intelligent networking, and mobile travel. On the other hand, with the advancement of globalization and continuous innovation of technology, consumers have more and more choices, and they pay more attention to the quality, performance and individuation of automobiles, and the competition in the entire automobile manufacturing industry has become fierce.

In order to meet the challenges of the era of change and fierce market competition, all car companies are launching new models faster and faster, the market cycle is getting shorter and shorter, the control of manufacturing costs is stricter, and the response to consumer personalized customization needs is more rapid. The realization of all this, in addition to the need to have a very resilient supply chain, but also need to have a more advanced automobile manufacturing technology, manufacturing technology will be one of the core competitiveness of future car companies.

As a benchmark enterprise of domestic automobile enterprises, Chery Automobile has actively implemented the core strategy of “digital Chery” in recent years, and built intelligent network “super factory” in two bases in Wuhu and Qingdao, Anhui Province, comprehensively upgraded the existing production scale, manufacturing technology, management technology, and accelerated the transformation from “traditional cars” to “intelligent cars”, so as to improve its core competitiveness.

FactoryTalk InnovationSuite enables smart connected gigafactory

Intelligence and network connection are the two major features of Chery Gigafactory. Specifically, Gigafactory realizes intelligent production, intelligent quality control, digital management and transparent operation. It not only has the characteristics of high intelligence, high quality and high efficiency, but also introduces the industrial Internet platform and establishes a new production mode of large-scale personalized customization.

The key to the realization of intelligence and network connectivity is to open up the data between the underlying equipment, control and monitoring layer on the operation technology (OT) side and the manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) layer on the information technology (IT) side, connect the assets of the factory to the Internet of everything, and realize the visualization, transparency and efficient collaboration of the factory. And can undertake this task, non-industrial iot platform is nothing. After conducting full market research, Chery Automobile finally selected Rockwell Automation’s digital innovation solution FactoryTalk InnovationSuite platform technology to build the industrial Internet of Things platform of the Gigafactory.

FactoryTalk InnovationSuite is one of the industry’s leading comprehensive digital transformation software suites, offering a broad convergence of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), edge-to-cloud analytics, MES and augmented reality (AR) capabilities. In the Chery Connected Gigafactory, ThingWorx Industrial iot platform, part of FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, connects different devices, applications and data sources in the factory. This provides a single source for collecting, summarizing, and securely accessing operational data from plant field equipment and production lines, and connects, manages, monitors, and controls a wide variety of automation equipment and software applications with an intuitive user interface design.