OEE is a common subject to monitor after installation and commissioning of production lines. In the future flexible EV battery lines the performance is even more relevant to monitor since the learning curve has to be gone through fast. Since the need for flexibility besides mass production will be even beyond the limits of other industrial products there is a good chance that the economical life time of a manufacturing line will be very short. This really puts the pressure on the installation, commissioning and start of production period, since these influences more the economical justification of the investments.
The monitoring of future manufacturing lines for EV batteries therefore already starts in the phase of simulation and emulation. So when the equipment is still at the design office of the equipment manufacturer.
This requires from these equipment manufacturers an agile approach during the project execution of building the machinery for the battery line. Feedback from virtual production environments created in cooperation between equipment suppliers and their customer, will immediately generate requests for change which need to be incorporated in the designs and the next executions of the virtual world.
After delivery of the machine which has been ramped up to high OEE levels in ultra-short time the involvement of the equipment suppliers will remain high. Continuous data analysis and evaluation will need new forms of interaction between the production plant and the line care professionals of the equipment manufacturer. Expected subjects like preventive maintenance will be an important topic of the discussions, but also the sharing of the most recent developments on battery and battery equipment designs need to be exchanged. The battery line will need to go over the original defined requirements on capacity, flexibility and other related performance subjects through defining which new alterations should be added to the existing manufacturing line. Of course only after they were added before to the digital twin of the real line and the performance increase has been verified and the learning curve for the add-on shortened to a minimum.
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