Software-defined Success: Audi’s Production Lines Enter a New Era with Cisco

[ad_1] {Hardware} has lengthy been the anchor holding again manufacturing facility innovation, however Audi is breaking that cycle with its groundbreaking Edge Cloud for Manufacturing (EC4P) challenge. This transformative initiative, detailed in a current ARC Advisory Group’s White Paper, positions Audi on the absolute forefront of good manufacturing, demonstrating a daring imaginative and prescient for software-defined factories and data-driven decision-making. As Audi shifts from idea to manufacturing, we prolong our heartfelt congratulations to Audi for this industry-first milestone!

At its core, EC4P embodies the easy but profound tenet: “Software program, not {hardware}.” Audi initiated the EC4P challenge to transition from a hardware-centric meeting line to a software-defined manufacturing facility. By changing hundreds of particular person items of {hardware} with a centralized, virtualized server cluster, Audi decoupled management logic from bodily equipment. This shift was pushed by the necessity to cut back upkeep complexity, enhance cybersecurity, and enhance manufacturing agility inside their 360factory technique. EC4P permits Audi to deploy software program updates globally and reconfigure manufacturing strains for various automobile fashions with unprecedented pace and cost-efficiency.

What makes EC4P an {industry} first? No carmaker earlier than Audi had so boldly created a plant structure that harnesses the efficiencies of a contemporary IT-like setup whereas meticulously contemplating the distinctive priorities and necessities of the Operational Expertise (OT) surroundings.

By turning the long-discussed IT/OT partnership into sensible actuality, EC4P’s on-premises personal cloud structure delivers 100 microseconds community latency, important for real-time management functions. This permits them to virtualize manufacturing belongings akin to Industrial PCs, HMI tools, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and even security PLCs. Total, EC4P creates a manufacturing surroundings that's each scalable and prepared for the long run.

IT-based manufacturing has been a aim of Audi’s for years, and EC4P is an important step in the direction of it. Cisco has been a key accomplice of Audi’s on EC4P for over 6 years, and collectively we’ve marked many milestones. This newest milestone builds on all of the others and places the automotive maker within the driver’s seat, setting the tempo for the {industry}.

Cisco is immensely proud to have performed a pivotal position on this groundbreaking endeavor. Our contribution to EC4P was multifaceted, guaranteeing the foundational infrastructure was sturdy, resilient, and prepared for the calls for of a contemporary, software-defined manufacturing facility.

Determine 1: Cisco’s constant networking infrastructure spans the plant flooring, enterprise, and knowledge middle Zero downtime: Cisco offers the important networking infrastructure that underpins EC4P guaranteeing excessive availability and fault tolerance for all manufacturing and compute assets from the store flooring to the information middle. Our Industrial Ethernet switches, ship superior resiliency that ensures seamless communication even throughout community failures, guaranteeing zero restoration time and no packet loss—a non-negotiable requirement for OT environments.

Seamless store flooring extension to knowledge facilities: Cisco Software program-Outlined Entry (SD-Entry or SDA) modernizes community structure by utilizing a centralized controller to simplify the administration of manufacturing zones and safety. By using superior protocols like Digital Extensible LAN (VXLAN), SD-Entry permits virtualized automation functions to perform as in the event that they have been nonetheless bodily related to the store flooring, even when hosted in a knowledge middle miles away. This functionality is important for bridging the space between manufacturing websites and knowledge facilities with out sacrificing real-time efficiency.

Complete safety and monitoring: Cisco’s options present sturdy safety (by way of Cisco Id Providers Engine or ISE), community latency telemetry (with Cisco Supplier Connectivity Assurance or PCA), and simplified community administration (utilizing Cisco Catalyst Heart), together with full-stack observability through Splunk, guaranteeing the whole expertise stack is protected and monitored.

Confirmed integration: Cisco supplied an end-to-end proving surroundings – a complete test-bed – to validate important multi-vendor integration, scale, and resilience of the EC4P structure. This laboratory surroundings was instrumental in bringing collectively Audi, Siemens, and VMware by Broadcom to combine and rigorously check their merchandise. Cisco acted as a expertise enabler, permitting every vendor to arrange and monitor their functions, guaranteeing full coordination and fast decision of any noticed issues. This collaborative testing section was important in proving the answer’s viability, ironing out complexities, and making ready it for Audi’s demanding manufacturing surroundings, delivering a prepared resolution for additional testing and deployment. Via this, Cisco helped Audi bridge the hole between IT and OT, delivering a validated design.

“For Edge Cloud 4 Manufacturing (EC4P), Cisco offers the important community infrastructure that ensures manufacturing and computing assets can be found from the manufacturing facility flooring to the information middle. Cisco is our accomplice in guaranteeing seamless and resilient communication for industrial functions. With the Cisco workforce at our facet, we have been in a position to implement the challenge inside a really brief time frame.”~Sven Müller, EC4P challenge supervisor, Audi

With EC4P, Audi considerably improved safety, and diminished prices, vitality consumption, and upkeep overhead. This shift improves their total tools effectiveness (OEE) and offers a scalable structure prepared for deployment throughout greater than 100 Volkswagen Group vegetation globally.

Audi’s EC4P challenge permits them to innovate on the pace of software program with out the constraints of proprietary {hardware}. EC4P is now a beacon for the manufacturing {industry}. Undertake the brand new benchmark in good manufacturing immediately to safe your aggressive edge in a data-driven world.

To delve deeper into this transformative initiative, view Audi’s press launch and skim the complete ARC Advisory Group’s White Paper. To start your personal journey towards a extra environment friendly, software-defined, and virtualized manufacturing surroundings, we invite you schedule a 1:1 session with a Cisco manufacturing professional to be taught extra about powering the factories of the long run.