Current Challenges of Production in the Automotive Sector and Auxiliary Sectors.

The automotive sector, and its auxiliary sectors, are the most productive and also invest the most in R&D&I. However, they are also among those that still perform a significant portion of their processes manually. Nevertheless, they are currently one of the sectors leading automated manufacturing, and we can find companies with a high degree of automation and control in their factories.

The above does not mean that the sector has not evolved in recent years. Due to the rise of production optimization methodologies, where Lean Manufacturing is the most widespread, and the increase in quality and continuous improvement procedures (APQP, AMFE, PPAP, or the ISO16949 & ISO2001 standards), there is an evolution towards teams of professionals that are transversal to the classic departments. As a result, maintenance teams must now coordinate not only with process teams but also with these new teams, and vice versa.

The progressive increase in automation in the automotive sector is enabling the calculation and monitoring of production indicators, as well as the availability of information not only for corrective and preventive maintenance but also for enabling predictive actions.

In a context with so much change, and in the era of digitalization, production and maintenance teams are under strong pressure. Improvements must be implemented that do not affect the process, either in the short or medium term, but they must also maintain the high levels of quality and supervision required. Carrying out this transformation is not a trivial matter.

Therefore, the technological evolution of recent years has led to tools and equipment prepared to solve the new problems of automation and process monitoring:

• Interaction between assets and systems: in the sector’s plants, devices with more than 10 and 15 years of age coexist with a multitude of control and programming software (it is not uncommon for there to be dozens of them). At a time when there is a growing concern for connectivity and massive data acquisition, there is an urgent need to be able to collect information regardless of the source and make it available in a standard way to the upper systems. Obviously, all in real time.
• Rapid recovery from asset or service failures. Thanks to improvements in equipment and methodologies, downtime due to equipment failures has been greatly reduced. However, if the device that breaks down or fails in question cannot be recovered with a replacement because its value is not only the physical device but also its programming and the data it stores, there are not many tools that can solve it. In other words, if the failure in question comes from a server (which should not go to zero) or a PLC, being able to certify and ensure the state prior to the failure is a real problem.
• Critical communications: another main element on which the entire process depends is communications, and a failure of these is not usually resolved with a replacement of equipment. Being able to strengthen, supervise, diagnose, and prevent problems in industrial networks in an agile manner becomes imperative. This point is especially important in critical networks where there are fieldbuses.
• Maintenance software: the typical APM and CMMS tools have had to evolve in recent years. Not only do they have to add easy-to-use predictive maintenance functionalities, but they also have to be able to interact and coordinate with the other production tools in a simple way.
• Documental reporting and local supervision: not only can systems work teams obtain value from the data, but the work team closest to production, both maintenance and operations, must also use tools for the generation of their own reports or the calculation and visualization of indicators. Obviously, these tools do not have to be as powerful as the upper ones, or analyze the entire factory, but should be more focused on the data of most utility for that local location.

It is necessary to highlight that the automotive industry, and its auxiliary, has long been aware that to improve its competitiveness they must address digitalization and automation. And faced with this combined challenge of technological evolution and work teams, experience says that to be able to carry it out safely, it is necessary not only to have the best tools but also trusted partners.

If you would like to obtain more information about our experience, or about our solutions focused on the automotive industry and its auxiliary, do not hesitate to contact our team of specialists.