DPA
Volkswagen production: Amazon is to network the machines and systems of the car manufacturer worldwide – and Siemens supplies the hardware
Prestigious order for Siemens Show stock market chart : The industrial group is to network the 122 Volkswagen plants with its “Digital Factory”, thereby creating the technical basis for the planned productivity gains. Siemens is thus practically providing the technological backbone for the “Volkswagen Industrial Cloud”, which the Wolfsburg-based carmaker had presented together with the US technology giant Amazon.
Siemens did not want to comment on the volume of the order on Friday. “With Siemens, we are gaining a strong partner with outstanding digitization and industry expertise,” said VW production director Oliver Blume.
In the “data cloud” (cloud), the data of all machines, systems and systems from all VW factories worldwide will converge in the future. The Siemens production software “Mindsphere” and other automation platforms are used for analyzing and processing the data. Not only are machines and systems to be directly networked with them, but they also need to know when a system needs to be worn or serviced. This should reduce downtime. “As a result, efficiency and flexibility in production and product quality can be further increased,” said Siemens CEO Klaus Helmrich. Siemens and Volkswagen also want to develop new functions for the cloud together with the plant manufacturers.
In the long term, Volkswagen plans to integrate its more than 1,500 suppliers and partner companies with more than 30,000 locations into the “industrial cloud”. The platform will later be accessible to other car makers. This will create a steadily growing, global industrial platform.
Worldwide industrial platform
Europe’s largest automaker Volkswagen had recently announced that he wanted to help with the help of the US technology giant Amazon mobilize its reserves and increase productivity on the way to become a supplier of electric cars. The two global companies announced a multi-year development cooperation on Wednesday toIndustry-CloudIn the future, the data of all machines, plants and systems from all 122 factories of the VW Group worldwide will be merged.
The more than 1,500 suppliers and partner companies with over 30,000 locations are also to be integrated in the cloud in the long term. In addition, the Wolfsburg want to make the cloud platform accessible to other car manufacturers. Thus, a growing, worldwide industrial platform, said VW.
“We will continue to strengthen production as a competitive factor for the Volkswagen Group,” said Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, who is responsible for production on the Group Executive Board. Behind all this, there is the pressure to launch mass-market electric cars within a few years at low prices in order to meet the stricter requirements for reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2).
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With the cloud, Volkswagen is provided with an overview of the processes and can therefore track down reasons for delays in production at an early stage. Process improvements can be transferred to all plants. The headquarters in Wolfsburg thus gain complete transparency across the entire supply chain. Until now, the factories in many countries have been using different software systems that hardly allow transparency.
Great potential
“The potential must be huge,” believes car analyst Jürgen Pieper from Bankhaus Metzler. “If you keep in mind what is lost in much smaller organizations through too long information and insufficient information quality.” Volkswagen has long resisted a collaboration with the tech giants from the United States. Diess’ predecessor Martin Winterkorn or even Ferdinand Piëch could be really hard to imagine as a partner of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “adds Pieper. Diess, on the other hand, published a selfie on LinkedIn, which shows him together with Bezos. This was the first to be reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The savings potential through the cooperation with the Amazon subsidiary Web Services is difficult to estimate, says Pieper. The dimensions would be clearer, if one assumes only one to two percent of the total costs. Then you are already at up to four billion euros.
His colleague Arndt Ellinghorst of the investment advisor Evercore ISI estimates the benefits of the alliance in a similar way: “Volkswagen has always been characterized by inadequate synergies and working capital management – if Amazon manages to help the VW engineers on the jump, one can only welcome. “
VW production is “too complex”
“The complexity in production at Volkswagen is high,” says car professor Stefan Bratzel. “If you bring the works to the same level, which is the idea behind it, and can exploit synergies, then it’s potentially a lot of money.” With the possibilities of artificial intelligence, which should also be used in cooperation with Amazon, the effects would be even greater. “And they are enormous in the world’s largest carmaker,” estimates Bratzel.
The scientist who heads the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach, however, considers another aspect important: if Volkswagen could increase its productivity and produce electric cars at low cost, this would put the competition under pressure. “For me, that’s a transmission belt for the consolidation that we have in the industry right now.”
The French carmaker Renault, for example, according to a newspaper report, targeting takeovers. Within a year merger talks with the Japanese partner Nissan should be included, then Renault wants to consider acquisitions of another car maker, possibly Fiat Chrysler, reported the “Financial Times”. Also on a possible merger of the French Opel mother PSA with Fiat Chrysler is speculated in the industry.
la / reuters / dpa