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EPLAN - efficient engineering.
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
EPlAn Software & Service GmbH & Co. KG
An der alten Ziegelei 2 · DE - 40789 Monheim am Rhein
Tel +49 (0)2173 3964-0 · Fax +49 (0)2173 3964-25
E-Mail: [email protected] · www.eplan.de