{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) venture. 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 lengthen our heartfelt congratulations to Audi for this industry-first milestone!
At its core, EC4P embodies the straightforward but profound tenet: “Software program, not {hardware}.” Audi initiated the EC4P venture 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 improve manufacturing agility inside their 360factory technique. EC4P permits Audi to deploy software program updates globally and reconfigure manufacturing strains for various car fashions with unprecedented velocity 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) setting.
By turning the long-discussed IT/OT partnership into sensible actuality, EC4P’s on-premises non-public cloud structure delivers 100 microseconds community latency, important for real-time management purposes. This permits them to virtualize manufacturing property equivalent to Industrial PCs, HMI tools, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and even security PLCs. Total, EC4P creates a manufacturing setting that’s each scalable and prepared for the longer term.
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 automobile 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 strong, resilient, and prepared for the calls for of a contemporary, software-defined manufacturing facility.
Zero downtime: Cisco supplies 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 heart. 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 information facilities: Cisco Software program-Outlined Entry (SD-Entry or SDA) modernizes community structure through the use of 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 purposes to operate as in the event that they had been nonetheless bodily related to the store flooring, even when hosted in a knowledge heart miles away. This functionality is crucial for bridging the space between manufacturing websites and information facilities with out sacrificing real-time efficiency.
Complete safety and monitoring: Cisco’s options present strong safety (by way of Cisco Identification Providers Engine or ISE), community latency telemetry (with Cisco Supplier Connectivity Assurance or PCA), and simplified community administration (utilizing Cisco Catalyst Middle), together with full-stack observability through Splunk, guaranteeing your entire expertise stack is protected and monitored.
Confirmed integration: Cisco supplied an end-to-end proving setting – a complete test-bed – to validate important multi-vendor integration, scale, and resilience of the EC4P structure. This laboratory setting was instrumental in bringing collectively Audi, Siemens, and VMware by Broadcom to combine and rigorously take a look at their merchandise. Cisco acted as a expertise enabler, permitting every vendor to arrange and monitor their purposes, guaranteeing full coordination and fast decision of any noticed issues. This collaborative testing part was important in proving the answer’s viability, ironing out complexities, and getting ready it for Audi’s demanding manufacturing setting, delivering a prepared answer for additional testing and deployment. By means of this, Cisco helped Audi bridge the hole between IT and OT, delivering a validated design.
“For Edge Cloud 4 Manufacturing (EC4P), Cisco supplies the important community infrastructure that ensures manufacturing and computing assets can be found from the manufacturing facility flooring to the information heart. Cisco is our accomplice in guaranteeing seamless and resilient communication for industrial purposes. With the Cisco group at our facet, we had been capable of implement the venture inside a really brief time period.”
~Sven Müller, EC4P venture supervisor, Audi
With EC4P, Audi considerably improved safety, and lowered prices, vitality consumption, and upkeep overhead. This shift improves their general tools effectiveness (OEE) and supplies a scalable structure prepared for deployment throughout greater than 100 Volkswagen Group vegetation globally.
Audi’s EC4P venture permits them to innovate on the velocity 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 in the present day 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 individual journey towards a extra environment friendly, software-defined, and virtualized manufacturing setting, we invite you schedule a 1:1 session with a Cisco manufacturing skilled to study extra about powering the factories of the longer term.