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Volkswagen: Modular body production lines

Volkswagen innovative: Eplan Engineering Center “from construction to configuration”. With the objective: increasing quality and 50% time saving in construction.

Pioneering work is important to an automobile manufacturer that claims to build “the car”.

And to build precisely these successful cars, each year the Volkswagen marque plans and

constructs on average 3 new production plants in various countries, each with hundreds of

robots. A growing number of vehicle derivatives and simultaneous reduction in production

for each vehicle derivative presents new challenges in the planning of production volumes.

It pushes the definition of standards into the foreground, together with the question of how

to model these. For this reason, since 2009 the Volkswagen marque has been successfully

using modular construction in its planning of plant electrics together with the EPlAn

Engineering Center (EEC).

The centrepiece of the EEC is a modular system with configurator for the generation

of circuit documentation with rule-based plausibility checking. Almost all mechatronic

dependencies are taken into consideration in the modular approach. The data originates

in a central model (Single Source of Truth). The Wolfsburg company wants to persuade

its suppliers of the benefits of this innovative working method – with growing and positive

resonance. “The configuration solution realised with the EEC is called the Volkswagen

Electrical Systems Configurator” (Volkswagen Elektro-Anlagen Konfigurator, VEAK). The

team headed by Steffen Strickrodt, electrical systems planning engineer, has developed

the individual configuration environment in close collaboration with EPlAn. “With the

VEAK, we have created a user-friendly and simple environment in EEC for ourselves and

our suppliers that is precisely tuned to our standards”, explains Strickrodt during our

interview in one of the brick buildings of the extensive Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg, with

a panoramic view over the port facilities and automotive city.

Functional engineering: work in parallel rather than in sequence

As an automotive engineer, Steffen Strickrodt likes to com-

pare the principle with the vehicle configurators that almost all

automotive manufacturers offer on the net: in the same way that

you can configure your dream car via a number of dialog boxes,

the VEAK guides the project engineer through configuration of a

body production line in the most user-friendly way possible.

In the conventional sequential process, mechanics planning

commences with dimensioning and layout dimensioning; then

this data is passed on to electrical planning, which is in turn

responsible for automation of the production line.

With the VEAK, this sequential working method is to be run

in parallel with the respective underlying interdisciplinary

linking information, duplicated input of the same information

is to be reduced over time. In order to be able to model this,

mechanical components of a body production line are regarded

mechatronically. Mechanical components such as industrial

robots, turntables or safety doors are modelled in the VEAK

with their interdisciplinary linking information – for example, their

representation in the circuit diagram.

The VEAK user configures the mechanical model of the

production line with the addition of information to model a

circuit diagram – among other things, specification of the wiring

sequence. The result is predictable due to this procedure, errors

caused by “copy & paste constructions” can be avoided and it is

possible to guarantee maintenance of standards.

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Preliminary work that pays off

This requires a certain amount of preliminary work, which

the VEAK team has been performing since the end of 2009

in collaboration with the Planning department and EPlAn:

the multitude of possible components has been arranged

hierarchically into A, B and C elements; A and B components

must be available in the configurator and cover about 45%

of requirements; C components are “nice to have” – whether

they are included in the modular system depends on how

often they will be used and how difficult they are to model.

Body production lines are to be fundamentally associated with

special machine construction. In this respect, organisation

into optimum modules is necessary: the correct size of the

modules is decisive so that they can be joined together

into a functional overall picture. Since the project engineer

undertakes configuration of the body production line, they

must also ultimately bear responsibility for the result. The

structure of the VEAK environment allows configuration of

individual modules in a targeted yet consistently clear manner

via an integrated ‘traffic light’ system.

Maintenance of standards guaranteed

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Time saving of up to 50 per cent

The preliminary work that the VEAK team provides with

the configurator pays off: for example, in this way the basic

structure of a work group with an approximately 300-page

circuit diagram “can be configured within two hours and

has a maturity level of 70 to 80 per cent”, explains Steffen

Strickrodt. The remaining 20-30% must be constructed

manually; this takes place using EPlAn Electric P8, as is

usual for construction companies at Volkswagen.

Manuals are provided in order to attain a result in the most

targeted manner possible in this work step; if the design

engineer follows these, they will have a “circuit diagram

that is correct after the test run”. “Suppliers are confirming

in a current survey: the VEAK is producing time savings of

about 50 per cent”, reports Steffen Strickrodt. The higher

quality of the automatically-generated circuit diagrams

is paying off already, with respect to checking and

double-checking of the circuit documentation.

New process model offers considerable advantages

With the VEAK, guidelines are modelled for the

maintenance of design specifications which can in turn

reduce the threshold for entry into projects: “Companies

reduce their time spent adjusting to the specifications

of Volkswagen standards”. The goal of the VEAK is to

reduce complexity for production line design, to increase

the market of possible contractors and thus attain

considerably more overall flexibility in production line

construction. This is consistent with the Group strategy of

modularising and standardising production lines (modular

production approach).

“Whoever knows about the modular approach wants to have it”

At present, the VEAK is being used in projects for the

plants in Puebla, Bratislava, Emden and Zwickau. Before

implementation, the companies are familiarised with

operation of the environment and the results in a two-day

workshop. “On the first day, we demonstrate what the

modular approach can do, how the environment is

structured and how the circuit diagrams are produced

in EPlAn Electric P8; on the second day, the workshop

participants themselves work with the modular approach,

and at the end we collect feedback for optimisation of the

VEAK”, says Steffen Strickrodt, describing a typical VEAK

workshop. The VEAK is to be used by the contractor on

each of the Volkswagen marque’s new body production

lines, “this helps to maintain our standards” – and to save

the users time and expense.

Reference projects such as the new body production line

in Puebla, which comprises about 350 robots in approx.

50 work groups, are important for establishment of the

VEAK. Each work group thus contains up to 12 robots with

a circuit diagram of up to 300 pages. With 50 work groups,

this means approximately 15,000 pages of circuit diagrams.

When users are asked about their satisfaction and

the potential of the system, they react positively; initial

reservations were quickly removed by the VEAK team in

the workshop. Users quickly realise for themselves the

possibilities and advantages that this innovation offer them.

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Considerable advantages

The VEAK team has set itself ambitious goals: “We would like to become an integral part of electrical systems planning,

and in future want to be taken into consideration in the design of all new production lines”. To achieve this, secure interfaces

for communication with suppliers are necessary. This year, the modular approach is to be implemented as a Web-based

configurator so that in future releases can be carried out uniformly on a central server, wherein nothing will stand in the way

of global availability. Furthermore, the VEAK will soon be expanded with the discipline of Software so that PlC programs for

body production lines can also be automatically generated. Fundamentally, the EEC offers the technology to automatically

generate all project-specific documentation such as tenders, bills of material, 3D models, circuit diagrams or software.

“We have a revolution in electrical engineering in our hands, and we want to resolutely promote it together with a strong

partner such as EPlAn”.

Go to www.volkswagen.de to find out more about Volkswagen.

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Ambitious visions

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