Artificial intelligence is having a significant impact on the automotive industry.
According to Future Market Insights, revenues from the sale of self-driving vehicles will exceed $70 billion by 2033. But AI-powered self-driving cars aren’t the one change — AI technology is already being introduced into vehicle manufacturing.
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As a part of this industry-wide trend, the BMW Group is now shifting gears to rely more heavily on AI to create a leaner and more efficient manufacturing process.
Contained in the BMW Spartanburg plant in South Carolina.
CNBC
In the previous few years BMW upgraded its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, adding recent AI capabilities. The factory covers over 8 million square feet and produces roughly 60% of all BMWs sold within the US, which translates to greater than 1,500 vehicles produced each day.
Within the body shop, robots weld 300 to 400 metal studs to the frame of every SUV. That is about half 1,000,000 studs applied by machines day by day and now managed by artificial intelligence.
The assembly line on the BMW factory in Spartanburg.
CNBC
According to BMW Group manager Curtis Tingle, the AI technology verifies that every pin is precisely placed. If a peg is misplaced, the system tells the robots to correct it. No human intervention is required.
“It’s a completely closed loop,” Tingle told CNBC. “[AI] it removes human considering, human manual intervention, right out of the equation.”
Tingle said the brand new technology dramatically improved performance. “We’re achieving five times greater than we thought possible before, thanks to what artificial intelligence is now achieving.”
BMW worker on the AI Stud correction station.
CNBC
According to Tingle, the AI spike correction laser has already saved the corporate greater than $1 million a yr. He said the brand new technology allowed BMW to remove six employees from the road and move them to other positions on the factory.
BMW told CNBC that the AI technology is patent pending and was developed at its Spartanburg plant.
On the factory, Camille Roberts, BMW Group’s IT project manager, explains that the brand new AI software helps speed up the carmaker’s existing inspection process.
Because the SUVs move along the road, 26 different cameras across the ground take pictures. That is when, according to Roberts, “artificial intelligence kicks in, identifying issues and submitting them for human repair,” thus stopping an imperfect vehicle from being shipped.
BMW AIQX vehicle inspection camera.
cnbc
Roberts told CNBC that prior to the brand new AI update, staff weren’t able to check each vehicle to the extent they will now, adding that “it’s probably not possible to check each automobile. … Production numbers just won’t meet global demand.”
Oliver Bilstein, BMW Group’s vice chairman of logistics and production control, said there remains to be room to apply for BMW’s AI technology.
Factory employees wear what Bilstein calls factory scanners that take measurements and high-resolution images of each inch of the factory.
These images are used to construct a 3D “digital twin” of the plant, allowing BMW to make adjustments immediately and understand how it can affect production before making changes in the true world, Bilstein said. Designers at BMW factories world wide can access these detailed plans online.
Bilstein said that thanks to the brand new AI software, the scanning process now takes days as an alternative of months.
Eventually, he said, such a AI technology will have the ability to self-learn to discover and recommend recent ways to make the BMW Group’s automated assembly line much more efficient.