Planet 2050 and the Future of Manufacturing: Data-Driven Approaches to Sustainable Production in Large Vehicle Manufacturing Plants

Abstract

This paper explores the future of manufacturing plants in large vehicle manufacturing through the lens of a single large European vehicle manufacturing complex. An example of a plant that originally mass-manufactured a single line of products, the complex is currently navigating a shift to more complex mixed model production and the production of electric vehicle powertrains. Using innovative datasets generated through a year-long stakeholder co-design process, a diverse set of partners collectively formed a project to design new, data-driven approaches to the challenge. The project collected and explored diverse data sources, including product bills of materials, facility layout data, current manufacturing system capabilities, energy usage and carbon generation, machine uptime and failures, factory control strategies, planning processes, and product quality data. The paper provides a summary of the explored data, key analyses, feedback from the stakeholders, early technical project interpretations, as well as broader project reflections and contextual descriptions of the factory – particularly of its goals and current challenges. The project supported stakeholders in exploring the potential of digital approaches to transform and facilitate the current manufacturing system's CO2 reduction pathway. The paper concludes by outlining several thematic issues facing large vehicle manufacturing plants.