Toronto, Ontario — Audi is taking new steps to further streamline its production process, announcing that artificial intelligence will be used to guarantee weld quality for high-volume production at its Neckarsulm, Germany facility.
According to Audi, about 5,300 spot welds are used to join the parts that comprise the body of an Audi A6. In the past, the factory has used ultrasound to manually monitor the quality of the welding through random spot checks. Audi says the use of AI will allow the detection of flaws automatically and in real-time.
“As a pilot plant for digital production and logistics at the Volkswagen Group, our goal is to test and develop digital solutions for vehicle manufacturing right through to their use in series production,” said Michael Haeffner, head of delivery management digitalization for production and logistics at Audi AG, in a press release.
“With the use of AI, we are testing an important key technology here that will make Audi and the location fit for the future.”
Audi developed the technology in cooperation with Siemens and Amazon Web Services as part of the Volkswagen Group’s Industrial Cloud, and plans for it to be rolled out in other locations.
“The underlying algorithm, its graphical user interface (dashboard) and an application for more in-depth quality analyses are currently being piloted in Audi A6/A7 car body manufacturing at the Neckarsulm site,” Audi said in the release.
“The aim of the project is for the algorithm to evaluate close to 100 percent of the set welding points during body manufacturing in the future. The long-term vision is that in the future, the quality of welding processes can be controlled automatically and continuously optimized.”
Audi said it expects to begin using AI to detect quality defects, such as small cracks in the car body, in volume production at the Ingolstadt press plant in early 2022.
The company says that they do not expect this announcement to have any effect on pre-existing repair procedures.
