From Continuity to High Availability in the Automotive Industry
The automotive industry is one of the most established sectors in Europe, considering both the amount of revenues and process innovation. It’s one of the industries that contribute most of the GDP o...
The automotive industry is one of the most established sectors in Europe, considering both the amount of revenues and process innovation. It’s one of the industries that contribute most of the GDP on the continent. Its exports far exceed its imports, and it’s also the biggest private investor in R+D in Europe.
However, the future development of an industry depends on its ability to achieve new efficiency levels. The PwC report recognizes this: “Hot topics for the automotive industry in Spain 2013” warns about the risk for the industry if it continues operating as “a big workshop”: “It will be difficult for the industry to play a key role at the international level or for Spanish plants to get relevant projects without taking a step ahead in innovation… It seems that the current model can keep the workload planned for coming years, but we should wonder whether this is sustainable in the mid and long term.”
Despite being one of the most technology-intensive sectors, among the issues affecting the industry is the impact of downtimes on productivity.
But, how Can We Achieve New Uptime Levels?
On average, according to estimations by Meta Group consultants, one hour of downtime costs €541,616. So, the difference between a continuity of 99.9% and 99.999%, although apparently negligible, increases losses from €4,744,556 per year to only €45,134. In view of these figures, High Availability is much more than an improvement; it’s a must for the industry.
Although in general terms an always-on architecture has a rather standardized design, the premise is that each plant needs a specific configuration. Fault-tolerant servers, virtual machines, remote desktop-oriented Client/Server architectures, thin clients, virtualization for industries in the cloud, or change management technology with solutions available for the industry that should be evaluated and implemented gradually but also continuously.
The highly needed production system maintenance, the continuous manufacturing dynamics because of the high market demand, the relevance of automotive plant protection due to the expensive asset configuration, as well as its complex use and the optimization of energy sources at the processes –electricity, gas, steam, air, cooling…–, make high availability the most suitable answer to the challenges currently faced by the automotive industry. According to the ARC Advisory Group consultants, the global industry loses about 5% of its annual output, or €15 billion, as a consequence of unscheduled downtimes and production quality failures, being predictable situations and avoidable in 80% of cases.
