On June 23, 2022, the major upgrade project of Brilliance BMW production base (referred to as “Lida Factory”) officially opened in Shenyang. The new factory was built considering the three aspects of “Lean, Green, and Digital”.
The Lida Factory has extremely high production flexibility and has a production system for electrification, with a maximum capacity of 100% for electric vehicle production. The first pure electric mid-size sports sedan of BMW – the all-new BMW i3 – has been officially produced here.
Dr. Nordkowitz, responsible for production at BMW Group, said:
“Future automobile production requires a new and overall way of thinking. Through BMW’s iFACTORY strategy, we are defining the future direction of BMW plant and production technology to meet the challenges of transitioning to electric travel. With leading digitalization, sustainability and high flexibility, Lida Factory has become the best example of BMW’s iFACTORY strategy.”
Mr. Gao Le, President and CEO of BMW Greater China, said:
“In just three months, our Dong Factory product upgrade project opened, the Lida Factory officially opened, and two new domestic models – the all-new BMW X5 and the all-new BMW i3 – were launched. The all-new BMW iFACTORY Lida Factory can switch to 100% electric vehicle production at any time according to market demand. The Lida Factory will play an important role in our acceleration of China’s electrification transformation process, together with Tie Xi and Dong factories.”
Metaverse Factory
High level of digitization
The newly built Lida Factory has reached an unprecedented level of digitization in the industry. It is the first BMW factory that was completely planned and simulated in a virtual environment from the beginning, from factory planning, architectural design, production line layout to equipment debugging, all created digital twin models and simulated on the Epic Games Unreal Engine 3D creative platform.
Factory employees can experience the entire factory in a comprehensive way in the virtual space before it is built, analyzing, evaluating, verifying, and discovering problems and areas for improvement in the design and system operation in advance. This enables timely adjustments and optimizations to reduce the number of rework during construction execution, significantly reducing costs and improving factory construction efficiency.
The fusion of the virtual and real worlds also enables cross-regional and cross-time zone collaborative planning and debugging, effectively overcoming the adverse effects of the epidemic and others. This alone allowed Lida Factory to start to produce after only two years, six months earlier than the normal construction period.### Yard Management System
The Yard Management System implemented by Lida Factory is the first to integrate real-time logistics data with 3D models, enabling simulations of various logistics scenarios and supporting safe, efficient and accurate container management.
The new system can handle as many as 70 container entries, exits and transfers to the production line business every day. Through real-time and visually intuitive twin data, the staff can be aware of all situations happening in the yard at any time, allowing planners to better plan the yard and provide precise and efficient parts delivery for production, combined with heat maps analysis.
For example, by connecting loading simulation with the automatic train dispatch system, outbound logistics can be optimized. Because nearly 80\% of BMW’s finished vehicles are shipped by train from the Shenyang Plant, these digital technologies ensure timely delivery of vehicles to customers.
Data-Driven
The factory is “data-driven,” using Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to connect every product, process, and employee to achieve high-quality, high-efficiency digital production.
The factory uses the industry-leading IPSI production management system and real-time location tracking technology to provide real-time and transparent information during vehicle assembly, which is displayed to workers via mobile terminals and intelligent programs. Data for each vehicle (such as geometry data) is closely tracked throughout production to ensure the highest product quality from the first process to the final vehicle assembly.
Artificial intelligence, data analysis and algorithms are widely used to shift decision-making from “experience-driven” to “data-driven”.
For example, in Lida’s painting workshop, an artificial intelligence computer vision system is responsible for taking photos and analyzing the painted surface of each car, taking 100 seconds to capture 100,000 photos. Through machine learning, the system can become more intelligent in identifying minor flaws in the paint surface to ensure that parts and painted bodies are perfect.
Currently, the BMW Shenyang production base has about 100 kinds of artificial intelligence applications.# “Data-Driven” – Strong Network Environment and Data Processing Capability
“Data-driven” cannot be separated from a strong network environment and data processing capability. For example, more than 1,600 multi-functional cameras at the Rida plant generate a data volume that exceeds 10 PB each year. To meet the bandwidth requirements of technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and real-time video transmission, the entire Rida plant is covered by 1Gbps 5G network. In order to deal with the massive data volume, Brilliance BMW has also built a data center with an area of about 3,500 square meters for the Rida plant, equivalent to more than 40 badminton courts, including more than 1,200 servers.
Sustainable Car Production
The BMW Group has set a goal of reducing the average carbon emissions of a single car’s full life cycle by 40% compared to 2019 by 2030, of which the production level has to reduce 80% of carbon emissions. Therefore, the concept of sustainable development is reflected in every corner of the Rida plant.
Currently, the entire BMW Shenyang production base uses 100% renewable energy. The BMW Shenyang production base has a solar cell array covering an area of 290,000 square meters, ranking first in Liaoning Province.
These solar cell arrays can generate 44,000 MWh of electricity per year, which is enough to support the power consumption of 9,000 ordinary families for a whole year. The expansion of the solar cell array will continue in the next few years, and the expansion area of the Rida plant will reach 120,000 square meters.
Since 2019, all factories of BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd. (BBA) in Shenyang have used 100% renewable energy for production and established the largest solar power generation system in Liaoning Province. With the advantage of newly-built plant, Rida plant continues to improve its sustainability standards, such as establishing Liaoning’s first combined heat and power system (CHP) that uses natural gas, adopting more energy-saving electric servo welding guns in the body workshop, and using many advanced technologies in the paint shop.
The innovative Intelligent Energy Management System (IOC) of the new plant can monitor real-time energy and resource consumption at the factory, facility, process, and equipment levels, and optimize them through deep analysis with artificial intelligence.
Highly Flexible Production System Oriented towards Electrification
Production flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of the BMW Group in the manufacturing field, especially the ability to allocate resources and adjust production according to demand in a short period of time. The overall design of the Rida plant is oriented towards the production of electric vehicles, but it can also produce all other models efficiently and flexibly.
Here, new models and derivative models can be integrated faster, and the delivery time can be further shortened. In addition to BMW’s own flexible production technology, this is achieved through widely used automation means such as Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and a scientific laboratory that performs centralized quality analysis through big data to ensure that all production activities are completed with the highest quality.
BMW’s “Home in China” Development Strategy
The Shenyang plant is located in the Tiexi District of Shenyang City, covering an area of 2.9 million square meters, and will have four production processes: stamping, body welding, painting, and final assembly. The total investment of the project is 15 billion yuan, making it the largest single investment project by BMW to date in China. The completion of the project marks the successful landing of all the about 83 billion yuan investment by BMW Brilliance at Shenyang production base since 2010, making China’s Shenyang the largest production base of the BMW Group in the world.
In 2021, the annual production capacity of BMW Brilliance exceeded 700,000 vehicles, making it the leader among luxury car companies. With the gradual increase of the production capacity in the Shenyang plant, the annual production capacity of BMW Brilliance will increase to 830,000, further driving local employment and high-end manufacturing industry cluster development and upgrading. In the past four years, BMW Brilliance has created 6,000 new job opportunities in Shenyang, and the total number of BMW Group personnel in China has exceeded 28,000.
The opening of the Shenyang plant is also an important step for BMW Group to accelerate its electrification transformation. In 2022, BMW Group will provide China with five pure electric models including the BMW iX3, i3, i4, iX, and i7 respectively. In 2023, the number of pure electric products of BMW Group in China will increase to 13.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.