Volkswagen and Amazon Web Services to Develop a Digital Industrial Cloud Automotive Platform

Volkswagen and Amazon Web Services Highlights

Volkswagen Industrial Cloud will combine data of all machines, plants, and systems from all the facilities of the Volkswagen Group
Significant productivity improvements at the plants are the objective
Integration of the global Volkswagen supply chain in Industrial Cloud in the long-term – more than 30,000 locations of over 1,500 suppliers and partners throughout the world
Open industry platform: possibly to be used by other partners in the future

The Volkswagen Industrial Cloud

Volkswagen and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are to develop the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud together.

Both companies Services announced a multi-year, global agreement to jointly develop this project.

In the future, the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud will combine the data of all machines, plants, and systems from all 122 facilities of the Volkswagen Group.

This will create new prospects for the optimization of processes in production and allows considerable productivity improvements at the plants.

The Volkswagen Industrial Cloud thus creates the essential prerequisites for achieving the productivity goals in production.

In the long term, the global supply chain of the Volkswagen Group with more than 30,000 locations of over 1,500 suppliers and partner companies could also be integrated.

By leveraging Amazon Web Services technology and services, Volkswagen is creating its Industrial Cloud as an open industry platform which other partners from industry, logistics, and sales may use in the future.

“We will continue to strengthen production as a key competitive factor for the Volkswagen Group. Our strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services will lay the foundation,” said Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG and Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft responsible for ‘Production’.

“The Volkswagen Group, with its global expertise in automobile production, and Amazon Web Services, with its technological know-how, complement each other extraordinarily well. With our global industry platform, we want to create a growing industrial ecosystem with transparency and efficiency bringing benefits to all concerned.”

“Volkswagen’s industrial cloud, which will reinvent its manufacturing and logistics processes, is yet another example of how ‎Volkswagen continues to innovate and lead,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS.

“Volkswagen's and AWS's collaboration will have a profound impact on efficiency and quality in production throughout Volkswagen’s global supply chain, as Volkswagen gains access to the broadest and deepest cloud with the most functionality, the most innovation, the highest  performance and security, and the largest community of partners and customers of any other infrastructure provider‎. We are tightly aligned across Volkswagen’s businesses to help them reimagine the future of automobile manufacturing by taking advantage of all the benefits the cloud can deliver.”

IT in production to be standardized and networked within the cloud

Through the development of the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud, Volkswagen is laying the foundation for the seamless digitalization of its production and logistics.

IT at the production level of machinery, equipment, and systems – for example for production planning and inventory  management – is to be standardized and networked across all 122 production plants of the Volkswagen Group. To date, there have been differences between the individual plants.

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Volkswagen has chosen the AWS portfolio of services including Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning analytics and computer services, which were developed especially for the production environment and will be extended to the requirements of the automotive industry.

The  architecture will be the new Digital Production Platform (DPP) from Volkswagen in the future. All the Group’s plants and companies  outside the Group will dock their system architectures onto this platform. This platform will standardize and simplify data exchange between systems and plants.

Process optimization and fast integration of new technologies

With it's Industrial Cloud, Volkswagen intends to open up new possibilities for further improving the efficiency and flexibility of production. The combination of data from all plants will provide new prospects for process optimization.

These include more efficient control of material flow, the early detection and elimination of supply bottlenecks and process disruptions, and the optimized operation of machinery and equipment in all plants.

In addition, the cloud-based platform with its simplified data exchange is an essential prerequisite for Volkswagen to provide new technologies and innovations rapidly across its various  locations. These include smart robotics, and data analysis functions to analyze and check shopfloor processes from plant to plant.

“The Volkswagen Group, with its global expertise in automobile production, and Amazon Web Services, with its technological know-how, complement each other extraordinarily well” Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG and Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen

With the cloud-based platform, new applications, for example in IT-security for shopfloor systems, can be scaled up direct to all locations throughout the world. Volkswagen will leverage AWS innovation best practices to become more agile and react faster on industry trends.

Open Industry platform to include other companies

Volkswagen is creating the Industrial Cloud as an open platform. The objective is to integrate companies from the entire value stream and to build up a network of industrial partners with a database and information that will bring benefits to all concerned.

In the long term, the global supply chain of the Volkswagen Group with more than 30,000 locations of over 1,500 suppliers and partner companies could also be integrated. It is also conceivable that the cloud platform will generally be accessible to other car manufacturers.

This will create a steadily growing global  industrial ecosystem.

Specific negotiations with major industrial companies interested in migrating to the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud are already in progress.

Volkswagen Industrial Cloud will be advanced at several IT-centers

Expert teams from Volkswagen and Amazon Web Services are forging ahead with the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud together. In the medium term, about 220 specialists are to work on the project.

They are based at several Volkswagen IT competence centers, as well as a projected joint Industrial Cloud Innovation Center in Berlin. Experts in Dresden, Munich, and Wolfsburg are to support  further.

Work is to begin immediately. The teams have already set 140 projects for integration. For example, these include a system for tracking the transfer of goods in- and outside the factory, e.g. by trucks (vehicle locating service) and services for the cross-plant analysis of system efficiency (overall equipment effectiveness, OEE).

The goal is to put the Industrial Cloud and the first  concrete services and functions into operation by the end of 2019.

Source: Volkswagen

The Volkswagen Partnership with Microsoft

According to the October 2018 announcement, the Microsoft partnership is geared toward creating a seamless experience for drivers from the moment they enter, use, and leave their vehicles.

Deutsche Welle (DW) reports that the partnership is part of a €3.5-billion bet Volkswagen is making on connecting its fleet of cars to the Internet.

Partnerships between carmakers and software groups are increasingly becoming a norm with drivers caring more about dashboard apps and services rather than what's under the hood.

VW said the new services would include charging and billing for electric vehicles, car sharing, e-commerce applications and telematics, which combines GPS mapping with onboard diagnostics to enable in-car assistance and fleet management.

Paul Miller, senior analyst, Forrester, in an email to CIO Dive, says it's common for companies to spread their cloud budgets among cloud providers.

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