What should a factory of the future look like?

Lean, green, digital, this is the answer given by BMW.

On June 23, as BMW's highest single investment in China's history, the large-scale upgrade project of BMW Brilliance's production base (Rida Plant), which cost 15 billion yuan, was officially opened.

For BMW Group, this is another important milestone in the company's nearly 20-year development in Shenyang.

The Lida factory is located in Tiexi District, Shenyang City. The name "Lida" comes from the homonym of Lida Village, where the new factory is located. The completion of this project marks that since 2010, BMW Brilliance's investment of about 83 billion yuan in Shenyang production base has all been successfully implemented, and Shenyang has become the largest production base of BMW Group in the world.

Dr. Nord Kovach, Director of BMW Group Production, said: "The future of vehicle production requires a new, holistic way of thinking. With the BMW iFACTORY strategy, we are defining the future direction of BMW Group factories and production technology to respond to The challenge of transitioning to electric mobility. With leading digitalization, sustainability and a high degree of flexibility, the Rida plant is a prime example of the BMW iFACTORY strategy.”

Within three months, BMW not only completed the opening of the product upgrade project of the Dadong plant and the official opening of the Lida plant, but also launched two domestically produced models - the all-new BMW X5 and the all-new BMW i3.

Gao Le, President and CEO of BMW Group Greater China, said: "Our e-mobility strategy is the key to achieving the BMW Group's clear sustainability goals. The Lida plant will join the Tiexi and Dadong plants in our accelerated progress. play an important role in China's electrification transformation."

It is understood that the Rida plant has extremely high production flexibility and can achieve up to 100% of the production capacity of electric vehicles. BMW's first pure electric mid-size sports sedan, the all-new BMW i3, has been officially put into production here.

The opening of the Rida plant is an important step for the BMW Group to accelerate its electrification transformation. In 2022, the BMW Group will provide Chinese customers with five pure electric models including the BMW iX3, i3, i4, iX and i7. In 2023, the BMW Group's pure electric products in China will increase to 13 models.

Dr. Dai Hexuan, President and CEO of BMW Brilliance Automotive Co., Ltd., said: "With the opening of the new Lida plant, we have not only fully increased the production capacity of our Shenyang production base, but are also well-positioned to meet the current and future needs of Chinese customers. The Rida plant embodies the lean, green and digital BMW iFACTORY strategy."

Factory out of the virtual world

The Lida factory built by Quanxin fully implements the BMW iFACTORY concept, and the level of digitalization has reached an unprecedented level in the industry.

The Rida factory is the first factory in the BMW Group that has been planned and simulated in a virtual environment from the very beginning. From factory planning, architectural design, production line layout to equipment debugging, all digital creations are made on the powerful Epic Games Unreal Engine 3D creation platform. Twin models and simulations to build a true "industrial metaverse" factory.

Before the completion of construction, factory employees can take the lead in a full range of factory experience in the virtual space, analyze, evaluate, and verify, and discover problems and areas for improvement in design and system operation in advance, and make adjustments and optimizations in a timely manner. Reduce the number of rework generated in the subsequent construction execution link, thus greatly reducing the cost and significantly improving the efficiency of factory construction.

The integration of the virtual world and the real world realizes collaborative planning and debugging across regions and time zones, and effectively overcomes the adverse effects caused by the epidemic. This alone took more than two years from the start of construction of the Rida plant to the start of production, which is 6 months shorter than the normal construction period.

A new level of digitalization

At the Rida plant, the BMW Group has applied a yard management system that combines real-time logistics data with 3D models to simulate various logistics scenarios and support safe, efficient and accurate container management. The new system can support up to 70 times of container entry, exit and container supply production line business every day.

Through the digital twin that changes in real time and is visually presented, the staff can keep abreast of everything happening in the yard at any time. Combined with heat map analysis, planners can better plan the yard and provide parts for production accurately and efficiently.

For example, loading simulations are linked to automated train dispatch systems to optimize outbound logistics. As nearly 80% of BMW's complete vehicles leave the Shenyang factory by train, these digital technologies ensure that vehicles are delivered to customers on time.

In addition, the Rida factory uses the IPSI production management system and real-time location tracking technology to provide instant and transparent information during vehicle assembly, which is presented to workers in real time through mobile terminals and smart programs. The data for each car is closely "tracked" through the various stages of production to ensure the highest product quality from the first process to the final vehicle rolling off the line.

At present, the BMW Shenyang production base has about 100 artificial intelligence applications. For example, in the paint shop of the Rida factory, an artificial intelligence computer vision system is responsible for taking pictures and analyzing the painted surface of each car, and can take 100,000 photos in 100 seconds. Through machine learning, the system seems to have an "eye-catching eye" that can increasingly intelligently identify tiny flaws in the paint finish.

The Rida factory has 1,600 multi-function cameras that generate more than 10PB of data annually. To this end, the entire Rida factory is covered with a gigabit 5G network to meet the bandwidth requirements of technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and real-time video transmission. In order to cope with the huge amount of data, BMW Brilliance also built a new data center covering an area of ​​about 3,500 square meters for the Rida plant, containing more than 1,200 servers.

sustainable production

The BMW Group is committed to creating the greenest electric vehicles, and has proposed a goal of reducing the carbon emissions of the average bicycle throughout its life cycle by 40% compared with 2019 by 2030, of which the production level must reduce carbon emissions by 80%. Therefore, the concept of sustainable development is also reflected in every corner of the Rida factory.

Currently, the entire BMW Shenyang production base uses 100% renewable electricity and has solar panels covering an area of ​​290,000 square meters. These solar panels can generate 44,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year, enough to power 9,000 average households for an entire year. Expansion of solar panels will continue over the next few years, with an expansion of 120,000 square meters at the Rida plant.

In addition, the Rida plant has established a combined heat and power (CHP) system for natural gas, introduced more energy-efficient electric servo welding torches in the body shop, and adopted many advanced processes in the paint shop. The new factory's innovative intelligent energy management system (IOC) monitors energy and resource consumption at the factory, facility, process and equipment levels in real time and optimizes it through AI in-depth analysis.

Moreover, the definition of green in the Rida factory extends to the scope of ecological environment and biodiversity protection. The plant area has more than 11,000 trees of different species, a garden of 7,500 square meters, including an artificial lake of 900 square meters and 33 different types of plants. Sustainable greening and sponge city systems capture rainwater, nourish plants and replenish groundwater.