Artificial intelligence is having a huge impact on the automotive industry.
According to Future Market Insights, self-driving car sales are expected to exceed $70 billion by 2033. But AI-powered self-driving cars aren’t the only change. AI technology is already integrated into vehicle production.
As part of industry-wide trends, the BMW Group is now shifting to relying more on AI to create more efficient and leaner manufacturing processes.
Inside BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina plant.
CNBC
In recent years, BMW has upgraded its Spartanburg, South Carolina factory with new AI capabilities. The plant spans over 8 million square feet of his site and produces approximately 60% of all BMWs sold in the United States, resulting in more than 1,500 vehicles produced each day.
In the body shop, robots weld 300 to 400 metal studs to the frame of every SUV. About 500,000 studs are applied daily by machine and are now managed by AI.
Assembly line at BMW’s Spartanburg factory.
CNBC
BMW Group Manager Curtis Tingle said that in the future, AI technology will check to make sure all studs are positioned correctly. If the stud is misplaced, the system tells the robot to fix it. No human intervention is required.
“This is a completely closed loop,” Tingle told CNBC. ”[AI] Eliminates human thinking and human manual intervention directly from the equation. ”
Tingle said the new technology has dramatically improved efficiency. “What AI is doing now, he’s doing five times more than was previously thought possible.”
BMW personnel at the AI stud straightening station.
CNBC
According to Tingle, the AI stud correction laser has already saved the company more than $1 million annually. The new technology has allowed BMW to lay off six workers from the line and redeploy them to other jobs at the plant, he said.
BMW told CNBC that the AI technology is patent-pending and was developed within its Spartanburg plant.
Camille Roberts, IT project leader at the BMW Group, explains on the factory floor that new AI software is helping automakers speed up existing inspection processes.
As the SUV rolls down the line, 26 different cameras across the floor take pictures. That’s when “the AI kicks in, identifies the problem, and flags it for a human to fix,” Roberts said, preventing the defective vehicle from being shipped.
Vehicle inspection with AIQX camera from BMW.
cnbc
Roberts told CNBC that prior to the new AI upgrade, human workers could not inspect every vehicle as they do today, adding: “It’s not really humanly possible to inspect every car…the production volume will simply not meet global demand.”
Oliver Bilstein, vice president of logistics and production management at the BMW Group, said BMW’s AI technology still has a lot to offer.
Factory workers wear what Bilstein calls a factory scanner device, which takes measurements and high-resolution images of every centimeter of the factory.
Bilstein said the images were used to build a 3D “digital twin” of the factory, allowing BMW to make on-the-fly adjustments and understand how they affect production before making changes in the real world. His BMW factory planners around the world can access these detailed plans online.
Thanks to new AI software, the scanning process now takes days instead of months, Bilstein said.
Ultimately, this type of AI technology will learn to discover and recommend new ways to make the BMW Group’s automated assembly lines even more efficient, he said.
