[Innovation on the front line]
Original title: Focusing on promoting digital transformation, strengthening innovation of all employees, intelligent manufacturing has brought a series of new changes to automobile enterprises - (introduction)
The "new" trend of traditional car enterprises is surging (theme)
Worker's Daily - reporter Peng Bing, Liu Shanshan, correspondent Yang Meng of China Industrial Network
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In recent years, the wave of "new four modernizations" of automobiles is surging, and the industry competition is becoming more and more intense. In the face of challenges, traditional automobile enterprises have been focusing on promoting digital transformation, strengthening all staff innovation, improving R&D and testing capabilities, and accelerating the landing of electric and hybrid products, showing a surging trend of "new" development.
This year marks the 33rd anniversary of FAW-VW. On the "Factory Day", 9 groups of new car owners were invited to visit the company's technology research and development laboratory and digital production workshop. From OTD system immediate ordering, to transparent and efficient intelligent supply chain assembly, to on-demand flexible production and precision to millionth of an automated process... The new changes brought by intelligent manufacturing to traditional car enterprises have made car owners "feast their eyes".
In recent years, the wave of "new four modernizations" of automobiles is surging, and the industry competition is becoming more and more intense. In the face of challenges, FAW-VW has established the development route of "self-reliance, innovation and transformation", focused on promoting digital transformation, strengthening innovation of all staff, improving R&D and testing capabilities, accelerating the landing of electric and hybrid products, and demonstrated the surging development momentum of "new" trends.
Digital transformation to realize flexible upgrading of production
There are a lot of shelves and dense cargo spaces. The sub buses are shuttling up and down, left and right. According to the computer scheduling information, they are orderly accessing boxes of auto parts - stepping into the E-lane3 intelligent three-dimensional storage center independently developed by FAW Volkswagen. There are few workers in sight and no noise. Everything is in full swing with the "digital flow".
"E-lane3, which was put into operation at the beginning of this year, has gathered the latest achievements of our company in intelligent warehousing, logistics, digital innovation, etc. It is the first digital intelligent product of supply chain logistics in the automotive industry based on the 'chain' model and organically integrating the new generation of intensive automated storage technology and complex scheduling logic." FAW-VW Production Management Department Chen Zhongyuan, Director of Logistics Planning Department, introduced.
What is "chain"? In brief, in E-lane3, "chain" is equivalent to a time window with 2-hour output as a unit. For example, between 8:00 and 10:00 today, FAW Volkswagen plans to produce 100 cars, and the parts needed for these 100 cars belong to the same "chain" number. The parts demand of the whole vehicle factory is generated according to the "chain", the supplier supplies according to the "chain", the stereo library stores according to the "chain", and then according to the assembly progress of the final assembly body flow, the parts are transferred to the production line, thus realizing the perfect matching of the order flow, body flow and part flow.
Since the "chain" is lean enough to take two hours as a unit, the entire logistics system will become very tight and precise, without redundancy. The parts produced by suppliers will soon be consumed by vehicle manufacturers, and the turnover efficiency of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain will be greatly improved.
"Based on the 'chain' model, we have developed a new generation of intensive automated storage technology, which solves the big problem with small space." Chen Zhongyuan told reporters that for the same storage volume, the traditional stereoscopic library needs to cover 6000 square meters, while E-lane3 covers only 3300 square meters. At the same time of saving the cost of land occupation, E-lane3 also significantly reduces the cost of the corresponding tallyman. Based on comprehensive calculation, the logistics cost can be saved about 30 million yuan every year.
This is just a miniature. In recent years, FAW-VW has implemented 58 digital transformation projects, including production and marketing integration, black light factory, intelligent warehousing and logistics, etc., which has realized the upgrading of production flexibility, improved the market response speed, and shortened the vehicle ordering and delivery cycle.
Rooting innovative ideas in the hearts of all employees
As we all know, stamping, welding, painting and final assembly are the four main processes of automobile manufacturing. Among them, the role of painting is not only to give cars beautiful appearance, but also to prevent corrosion. In the FAW-VW painting workshop, Yu Li, a senior maintenance technician, took the reporter to visit the upgraded intelligent production line, and saw one robot workstation after another. Various robots wielded spray guns of different styles, and were painting, gluing, and "painting" the body in white layer by layer.
"The key equipment in the painting workshop is various spray guns. They are very expensive, ranging from hundreds of thousands yuan to 50000 to 600000 yuan, and the maintenance cost is particularly high." Yu Li pointed to a spray gun used to apply PVC glue to cars and said, "According to the demand of usage, it needs to be maintained every two months, and disassembled every six months. After disassembly and analysis, we found that this glue gun is driven by air. Because the glue pressure is far higher than the air pressure, the control system is often damaged. So we made metal seals through innovative design, eliminated the leakage of glue gas, and extended the maintenance period of glue gun to two years. It can be disassembled once every three years or so, greatly reducing the shutdown rate of equipment and the purchase cost of spare parts. "
Not just optimization and improvement. The outsourced atomizing spray gun needs to be maintained once every 6 months. Yu Li led the team to design a new spray gun and make it by himself, realizing maintenance free within five or six years. "Like the original spray gun with a price of 50000 yuan or 600000 yuan, we designed the drawings and handed them to domestic manufacturers for production. The results were better than the quality of imported products, but the purchase cost was less than 1/3 of the original," said Yu Li.
In the Yuli Model Worker Innovation Studio established in 2019, a dazzling array of innovative achievements dazzled people. "In 2020, our workshop did not even have a patent. In recent years, the company has made efforts to root the innovation concept in the hearts of all employees. As the leader of the first professional painting studio of FAW-VW, I led the team to actively carry out independent innovation, and successively obtained 33 patents, saving more than 14.51 million yuan for the enterprise." Yu Li said.
In 2023, the visual high-precision closed-loop control system for glue coating quality independently developed by Yuli Labor Model Innovation Studio realized the first auto glue coating shape self control function within the known range of the industry, and won the special prize for innovation achievements of national mechanical metallurgy building materials workers.
Accelerate the formation of new quality productivity in the field of R&D and testing
At the same time, through project construction, FAW-VW's new quality productivity in R&D and testing is also accelerating. The FAW-VW test field has a total investment of 1.75 billion yuan. After three phases of construction, it now has the ability to develop and test a full range of vehicles, and is the largest comprehensive vehicle test field in Asia at present.
"Before any new model of FAW-VW is put on the market, it needs to go through the tests of the worst road conditions in the world to verify the reliability and stability of the vehicle." Ning Jing, an engineer in the whole vehicle test field of FAW-VW Technology Development Department, told reporters that the test field has eight core functional areas, of which only the endurance enhancement test area has "concentrated" 16 special road conditions.
The FAW-VW whole vehicle dynamic anti-corrosion test center, which was inaugurated and put into use last October, is also located in this test field. Entering the salt fog test workshop, the reporter saw that the inspected vehicles were constantly sprayed with salt and spray in the high-temperature environment, while in the low-temperature four channel road simulation test workshop, the vehicles had to go through continuous and substantial turbulence and vibration... After various "fancy masochism", the vehicles finally arrived at the evaluation center, were completely disassembled, and accepted the "naked inspection".
"Anti corrosion testing for cars is like cooking, but only after passing various severe tests can this dish be served on the table." Guo Chen, an engineer, told reporters that as the only whole vehicle anti-corrosion test center of Volkswagen Group in China, the use of this center has supplemented the last link of FAW Volkswagen's whole vehicle test and research and development capabilities, Will strive to lead the new future of automotive anti-corrosion technology.
"In addition to improving the level of vehicle test and R&D, this test can also fundamentally eliminate the bottleneck of development progress caused by insufficient test capacity, meet the larger production and marketing needs of FAW-VW and industrial chain partners, and thus comprehensively improve the overall operation quality of the industry." Ning Jing introduced that wind power projects were planned in the confidential reserve area around the test site, The green electricity produced in the future can not only be used in the test field, but also meet the power demand of FAW-VW Changchun Plant, helping the green development of enterprises.
