AI in Production: Audi Scales Cloud Platform and Deploys AI Across Manufacturing

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AI in Production: Audi Scales Cloud Platform and Deploys AI Across Manufacturing

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Audi is consistently rolling out artificial intelligence in production and logistics, scaling up its own cloud platform for production and introducing new AI use cases and technologies for large-scale series production. The company is transforming its plants into smart factories where AI acts as a partner providing employees with tailored support with the first AI-controlled robots taking over ergonomically strenuous tasks and chatbots providing additional relief. Audi is putting the Edge Cloud 4 Production into operation across its production environment, setting the next benchmark in fully networked factory automation and laying the foundation for the widespread use of AI in production. The EC4P makes it possible to combine conventional automation technology with flexibility and computing power from the cloud, simplifying processes, reducing hardware required on site and introducing new functions more quickly. In vehicle assembly at German plants, worker guidance is increasingly being controlled centrally from the cloud with employees receiving information such as vehicle specifications or regional versions from a central source in real time. The move to the cloud has eliminated the need for more than 1,000 industrial PCs. In the body shop for the A5 and A6 series in Neckarsulm, Germany, virtual programmable logic controllers are replacing local hardware controllers on production lines with around 100 robots working together via EC4P with millisecond precision, enabling several hundred vehicle bodies to be manufactured every day in three shifts. The Weld Splatter Detection system detects weld splatter on the underbody of a car body and marks it with light with a robot arm taking over the grinding work, a physically demanding job. The Volkswagen Group's first AI-supported weld spatter detection system will go into series production at six plants in Ingolstadt. Audi developed ProcessGuardAIn, its own AI solution for monitoring manufacturing processes, built on the cross-plant P-Data Engine platform combining various system and plant data from production at a uniform quality level. Based on machine and sensor data, ProcessGuardAIn monitors production steps in real time, detects anomalies at early stage and informs experts. The pilot phase for two use cases is ongoing at the Neckarsulm paint shop with introduction into series production planned for Q2 2026. Audi is also working with ten partners in the Next2OEM project at its Ingolstadt headquarters to demonstrate how production and assembly of a wiring loom can be completely digitized and automated from supplier to installation in the factory.