Audi launches initiative for digital factory transformation in Heilbronn

Audi's 'Automotive Initiative 2025' aims to establish a world-leading competence network for digital factory transformation and innovation. The Audi site in Neckarsulm will assume a central role as a pilot factory and real-world laboratory for digital transformation.

Audi already uses intelligent digital solutions at its production sites all around the world. The Automotive Initiative 2025 (AI25) is launched in Heilbronn with partners from academia and the IT sector to continue along this path. AI25 is striving to develop digital solutions for the factory of the future and implement them in vehicle production and logistics for series production within the next five years, with the overarching goal of making these key components of the production process even more efficient and flexible. 

As the pilot factory, the Audi site will become a real-world laboratory for the company's digital transformation and thus play a central role in the initiative. There, digital solutions for vehicle production and the supply chain will be tested and developed for use in series production. 

The basis for this collaboration is the Digital Production Platform (DPP), in which the data of every machine, piece of equipment and system from every plant in the Volkswagen Group are pooled.

The sites thus become part of the industrial cloud, which in the future will also include the Group's supply chain as well as additional partners. With Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt, the first two Audi sites have already been connected to the DPP; the remaining sites will follow later this year. Their collaboration will involve the development of machine learning and computing services created specifically for the production environment and adapted to the requirements of the automotive industry. 

The initiative is expected to become an idea foundry and driver for the digital transformation of production and logistics throughout the Volkswagen Group. The knowledge gleaned will be used to lay the foundation for the next generation of digital production processes, on which companies will work together on solutions for modular production and interoperable vehicle logistics, as well as help shape the future IT configuration of automotive plants.