Research project for the digitalization of battery production

Every day, VARTA pro­duces near­ly ten mil­lion bat­tery cells, mak­ing it an ide­al part­ner for the DigiBattPro4.0 project of the Fraun­hofer Insti­tute for Man­u­fac­tur­ing Engi­neer­ing and Automa­tion. The abbre­vi­a­tion stands for dig­i­tal­ized bat­tery cell pro­duc­tion with Indus­try 4.0 tech­nolo­gies. The goal is to devel­op the bat­tery pro­duc­tion of the future, in which every step is dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and mon­i­tored using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The aim is not only to detect faulty parts, but also to opti­mize the process so that the cause of the fault can be rec­ti­fied imme­di­ate­ly. And this is done with­out the need for human intervention.

 
“We are proud to be able to act as a pio­neer here. DigiBattPro4.0 is an excit­ing project that will help us make our process­es even more dig­i­tal and even faster. In this way, we are secur­ing and fur­ther expand­ing our com­pet­i­tive­ness and tech­no­log­i­cal progress.”
— Isa Topac, Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Man­ag­er at VARTA
 

In DigitBattPro4.0, experts from the Fraun­hofer Insti­tute net­work the machines and design a com­put­er mod­el so that the real pro­duc­tion process can also be mapped vir­tu­al­ly. This is intend­ed to cre­ate the basis for self-reg­u­lat­ing pro­duc­tion. The plan is then to use this tech­nol­o­gy in the pro­duc­tion of the new lithi­um-ion round cells, which the com­pa­ny will pro­duce on a pilot line start­ing at the end of the year. The aim is to achieve ful­ly auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion in which speed can be fur­ther increased and scrap fur­ther reduced. The project is sched­uled to run for four years.

 
“DigiBattPro4.0 offers us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a deci­sive con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of tomor­row’s bat­tery pro­duc­tion. In the future, it will be pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor and opti­mize all process steps thanks to state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The com­pa­ny already deliv­ers the high­est pre­ci­sion in all steps of cell pro­duc­tion today and is there­fore the opti­mal part­ner for the project. We are delight­ed to be involved once again in the future of bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and production.”
— Rain­er Hald, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer of VARTA AG