Volkswagen’s new cloud projects promise a revolution in its logistics and how the Group runs its supply chain.
On March 3, Volkswagen and Amazon announced a “a multi-year, global agreement” to collaborate and create what they called the “Volkswagen Industrial Cloud”. The objective of this is to ‘leverage’ Amazon Web Services capabilities in “Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning analytics and compute services… which will be extended to the requirements of the automotive industry.”
At the same time, Volkswagen also announced that Siemens would be an “integration partner for the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud” playing a “a key role in ensuring that machinery and equipment of different manufacturers at the 122 Volkswagen plants are networked efficiently in the cloud.
Untangling these statements, it appears that that Amazon Web Services will be designing a new strategic information system for supply chain and assembly plants, whilst Siemens will install its ‘MindSphere’ software architecture at VW assembly plants to integrate its production engineering management at the operational level.
All of this is ambitious. Amazon Web Service’s CEO, Andy Jassy, described the “Volkswagen Industrial Cloud” as reinventing VW’s “manufacturing and logistics processes”. In an interview Gerd Walker, Head of Volkswagen Group Production, described how he hoped that the new system would work saying that “if a truck is about to get stuck in a traffic jam, a component is faulty or a machine breaks down, everyone involved knows immediately. Because the information is immediately available via the cloud. For example, material flows, and possible delivery bottlenecks can be managed even better. The Volkswagen Industrial Cloud enables smart real-time control – simultaneously in Wolfsburg and Shanghai, Chattanooga and Uitenhage”.
All this represents an attempt to re-invent logistics at Volkswagen. Such systems are not new. BMW in particular has spent years on trying to create an effective strategic information system reconciling production and demand. However, cloud architecture supported by artificial intelligence capabilities offer the potential to run a supply chain and assembly operations far beyond present levels of effectiveness. The remarkable thing is that Volkswagen is relying on Amazon Web Services to do this. The Siemens relationship might be described as an extension to existing production hardware, although it will have implications for the effectiveness of production planning within the plant. The Amazon project however, is more far reaching and implies a rethinking of how the Wolfsburg company manages its supply chain and therefore how much of the company is run.
Volkswagen will never be the same.
Source: Transport Intelligence, April 4, 2019
Author: Thomas Cullen
