“The start of construction on our new plant in Changchun is an important milestone for Audi in China. With the Audi FAW NEV Company, we are bringing the PPE platform to China and producing market-specific, all-electric models directly on site. This means the cooperation company will play a key role in the ongoing electrification of our model range for the Chinese market,” says Markus Duesmann, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG and accountable for the China business.
The new plant is being constructed on an space of round 150 hectares, which is able to make it barely bigger than the present Audi plant in Neckarsulm as soon as accomplished. A complete of 20 buildings will likely be erected on the positioning by the top of 2022. The technical crews housed on the website will cowl the whole worth chain wanted for automotive manufacturing. In addition to a press store, physique store, paint store, and automobile meeting line, there may even be a battery meeting facility, the place Audi will manufacture the high-voltage batteries used in its China-specific PPE fashions.
Audi selected the brand new location fastidiously: The German-Chinese cooperation firm will profit from the best infrastructure in Changchun. Changchun is without doubt one of the largest automotive areas in China. FAW (First Automobile Works), a long-standing Chinese associate of the corporate with the 4 rings, has its headquarters there. Audi has been producing fashions for the Chinese market in the FAW-Volkswagen vegetation since 1988. As a consequence, quite a few provider corporations for the brand new plant are already situated in the area.
With the brand new manufacturing website, Audi can also be creating round 3,000 new jobs in Changchun. Once the plant is accomplished, manufacturing based mostly on the PPE platform will start, beginning with three fashions from the Audi A6 e-tron and Audi Q6 e-tron collection.
The new website may even function the headquarters of the Audi FAW NEV Company, which is accountable for manufacturing. The firm is the primary cooperation firm with a majority curiosity held by Audi in China. Audi is investing round 2.6 billion euros in the general mission, which encompasses each the creation of the corporate and development of the manufacturing plant.
“We are combining the best of two worlds. We are bringing together AUDI AG’s know-how from over a century of automotive history and the comprehensive expertise of our long-standing Chinese partner FAW in a new, ultramodern company with a production site,” emphasised Helmut Stettner, CEO of the Audi FAW NEV Company. This can also be mirrored in the quite a few smart manufacturing applied sciences that the 2 companions are bringing collectively in the brand new factory, Stettner added.
Sustainable, networked, environment friendly: Audi builds smart factory
The new Audi FAW NEV Company website boasts state-of-the-art applied sciences and options. In phrases of factory structure and processes, the corporate is drawing on profitable templates from different Audi websites and optimizing them to native situations. All upkeep, logistics, and manufacturing processes are networked beneath one single IT structure. And for the first-time exterior Europe, Audi is utilizing a completely built-in logistics resolution based mostly on SAP S/4HANA. Before the buildings are even standing, digital instruments are already in use: 3D scanning is employed to recreate the whole development website in nice element – one other first for the Volkswagen Group. This step permits the planning employees in Ingolstadt to comply with the progress of website work carefully, regardless of the nice distance, in addition to to debate the following steps with the consultants on website.
