BMW digitalises logistics and upkeep in Mexico
As provide chain pressures begin to abate, Mexico’s beneficial value and commerce construction contains tariff-free agreements throughout main markets in North America and Europe, and high-potential markets in South America. Which means its mannequin portfolio is ready to develop and the carmaker is trying to management the complexity of manufacturing and preserve value and effectivity for worldwide elements and car shipments with the most recent digital instruments.
One of many key improvements on the plant in San Luis Potosi is a single management centre that provides an summary of all of the know-how in operation. That permits the plant, for instance, to regulate the meeting line in response to an issue within the physique store or paint store, in response to Harald Gottsche plant director and CEO of the San Luis Potosi plant. The power additionally use methods that spotlight pointless power consumption to cut back waste and generate financial savings.
Management centre
The plant is presently establishing a digital management room to provide it better visibility over the arrival of parts.
“We principally created a transparent overview of what’s being packed into containers at suppliers or in Germany on the packaging plant and the place these containers are,” Gottsche mentioned.
This makes vital financial savings potential in delivery because the rent of returnable containers for carrying elements ends in extra costs after day 14 of steady use.
“We created these indicators on the place the containers are, the place the consumption is and we additionally used that to place into cloud information and likewise created synthetic intelligence algorithms,” mentioned Gottsche.
That info is enabling BMW to make predictions with an accuracy of 99% from when a container of elements is loaded in Europe whether or not that container goes to be on time or whether or not it’ll incur extra prices.
“And with that we might principally scale back our month-to-month rental value for these containers from €120,000 ($117,000) to lower than €30,000,” Gottsche mentioned.
Learn extra concerning the manufacturing developments on the San Luis Potosi plant
RFID high quality management
The plant additionally makes use of radio frequency identification (RFID) to make sure that automobiles are all the time fitted with the precise elements to keep away from the danger of blending up of specs.
“The main impact of the RFID tags that we use on half numbers is that we now have full high quality management, we are able to totally test and are 100% certain that the precise half is in the precise automotive,” Gottsche mentioned.
That is very helpful for BMW given the product complexity at San Luis Potosi with completely different automobiles for nearly 70 markets and a excessive number of choices. It is usually helpful for the product lifecycle as a result of it provides BMW all the info vital for any high quality actions, similar to recollects.
Particular person items of apparatus on the plant may be scanned with a QR code that makes it potential to drag up instruction manuals and upkeep information, in addition to pictures, of their particular person parts to make sure that the defective half is being changed with precisely the precise alternative.
Siegfried Jung, vice-president of manufacturing management, at BMW’s San Luis Potosi plant might be speaking at subsequent week’s Automotive Logistics and Provide Chain Mexico convention in Mexico Metropolis
Information retrieved from tools additionally allows extra exact predictive upkeep, Gottsche defined.
“We attempt to use all the info that the tools is giving us and to search for abnormalities,” he mentioned. “At this time’s tools has plenty of sensors and information in it, present consumption, temperature, to foretell failures.”
Gottsche mentioned that the method required numerous information assortment and information utility, however that was one thing his crew was doing for essential tools, within the paint store for instance, the place it actually paid off.
BMW has additionally not too long ago opened a brand new $100m logistics centre subsequent to its US meeting plant in Spartanburg, which is predicated on iFactory rules. The 93,000 sq.m facility consolidates two offsite places and is devoted to logistics for BMW’s X fashions.
