More than a hundred years after Henry Ford invented the vehicle production line, Germany’s carmaker Audi is on the brink of revolutionizing its own production processes. Out go the traditional production lines and in comes a new modular assembly method at the Ingolstadt based carmaker. In the future, vehicles won’t be manufactured according to a rigid sequential process; instead they will be worked on at individual modular workstations where assembly will be carried out by one or two workers (doors, roofs,). Automatically guided vehicles will supply components. Audi’s new system should start in 2017 with a pilot project at its motors plant at Györ, Hungary. In response to questions from Planet Labor, Audi spokesperson Sabrina Kolb stated that this new production method should lead to lower stress levels and benefit both older workers and those suffering disabilities.
Increasingly customized demand. Car production of the future has been conceived of and is being developed by the start-up Arculus at an old disused site not far from Audi’s current Ingolstadt location. Onsite one can see driverless robotic systems transporting the cars’ bodywork and equipment from one individual modular workstation to another. A central intelligence unit directs the robots to distribute materials according to each workstation’s needs. “It’s like customers at the supermarket...
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