Men, Software and Machine Work Hand in Hand.

Effective Production Control at Volkswagen.

Our production, information and control system (known by the German acronym FIS) is automating the supply chain in Volkswagen’s plants worldwide

The Customer

The large volume of parts, suppliers, work operations and materials in the automotive production process is difficult to manage. With the production, information and control system, known by the German acronym FIS, Volkswagen has taken a major step closer to an ideal production flow. As the IT backbone, this Manufacturing Execution System manages the supply chain and reliably controls the production flow.

The FIS delivers across all brands and on every continent

It doesn’t matter whether Bentley is building luxury vehicles in Great Britain, the Volkswagen plant in Mexico is building New Beetles or Chinese workers are assembling the classic Passat. Previous plans called for workers on the assembly line to take individual parts out of a crate and assemble them in sequence in the vehicles. Today, Volkswagen is making great strides using the production, information and control system (FIS).

Special requests by customers present no problem in production flow

With the FIS, Volkswagen guarantees that every car is built exactly as its subsequent owner ordered it. For departmental managers, this requirement can be met only with the help of IT systems. “ With the FIS, not even the most unusual wishes of the customer can slow down the production flow,“ raves Holger Piskol, the former product manager for the FIS at Volkswagen. The succession of vehicles produced in one day of production — called a sequence by managers at Volkswagen — involves several restrictions and requirements. The departmental managers can specify a sequence only by maintaining a balance between orders and restrictions. With several hundred vehicles produced daily, this work is not even conceivable without data processing systems Moreover, the FIS stores all product data and ensures secure access. “ The system ensures that research on every detail is done for each individual vehicle. All data up to the assembly sequence, the component serial numbers and the production time can be traced back to the Volkswagen archives,“ explains Oliver Spielvogel, manager of Supply Chain Management.

The entire plant operates to the beat of FIS

Volkswagen orders the necessary parts according to the specified process flow on the assembly line. The parts are no longer placed on the assembly line in large crates as they were in the past, but are instead in what are called shopping carts, individually commissioned for the vehicles to be produced. In this way, man, EDP and machines work hand in hand. The FIS sends a message to each employee as well as to each machine on the line about which vehicle is coming next. The machines know what they need to do to assist the workers. And the employees know which parts are to be installed in this particular vehicle.

The components are then delivered directly to the production line in precisely the right order. By maintaining this required frequency, it is possible to establish a continuous flow in production. This mechanism is not only followed by the production process — every area that supplies the employees is oriented precisely according to this timing. For example, Volkswagen’s own preassembly, such as for engines, is timed precisely to suit the system. This also holds true for deliveries made by external just-in-time suppliers who receive information on when the vehicles will enter production. Starting at that point, they are responsible for ensuring that the parts arrive on time and, above all, in the right order on the assembly line. In this way, the FIS gradually replaces the old parts crate system in the VW production process and ensures effective production flow.

Downtime of 20 minutes maximum

Employees in the central control station watch how the vehicles are pushed through production and immediately take action if there is a risk that the sequence will be interrupted. If the sequence must be interrupted to solve a problem, the managers allot exactly 20 minutes for downtime. Thus, a high degree of availability must be provided by the hardware and software. Our technicians and IT technicians from Volkswagen have made provisions for the possibility that processes might fail. The procedure for handling a system failure is specified in a detailed escalation plan.

The FIS is designed to be decentralized so that a similar installation is available at all locations worldwide. These sites are linked to Volkswagen’s centralized data centers. In this way, the centers are able to provide all relevant data to production worldwide and can guarantee reliable a supply chain management system.

Through the FIS, the machines are not only strong, but also smart and organized. The company is definitely a step closer to its goal of having work in production flow more efficiently by using the FIS IT backbone by T-Systems.