When Philosophy Needs To Make Way for the New School Of Thought

At Audi's plant in Ingolstadt, second-largest car factory in Europe, a car leaves one of the production lines every 30 seconds. For the longest time, the over 100-years-old philosophy of making cars in a fixed, continuous manner has served as the impetus for mass production. All these years later, this school of thought continues to be tantamount to efficient production. However, in light of the progress the world has made, Audi believes this philosophy of production of cars needs to change. Hence, it is working on a vision for the post-production-line age and is developing a completely new principle - modular assembly. The company wants to employ this approach to conquer growing complexity and diversity with increased flexibility and efficiency. Deemed highly dynamic in terms of time and space, Audi expects this new way of making cars to deliver productivity benefits of at least 20 per cent.

Production diversity in the automotive world has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. And considering customer demand, global market differentiation, and new driveline technologies, it is only going to grow even more rapidly. The fast-paced development in the industry has made it increasingly hard to not only control this complexity within the bounds of an inflexible sequential process but also to integrate new processes on a continuous basis. Long story short, in order to introduce crucial alterations the whole assembly line has to be stopped - an occurrence which is not only expensive but also costs a lot of time. Here' of how these losses add up: in Ingolstadt, the production lines run at a fixed interval of nearly 90 seconds. This means the line runs idle in many places like the installation of stationary heating, which only some models have. The more varied the equipment being put into the cars and the more diverse the model mix on the line, the more these losses add up. Take the Audi A3 Sport back e-tron for example - at Ingolstadt, it runs through a meander, where it is equipped with a majority of its exclusive electrical content. However, while this is happening, the model's siblings run an extra lap of the suspended line. This eventually translates into an extend time of completion for all the cars on the line.

The revolutionary concept of modular assembly addresses these problems. Audi is gradually doing away with the fixed-rhythm production line and breaking it up into its individual process steps. Today, the Audi A3 line has around 160 process steps. In modular assembly, it is being turned into roughly 200 spatially separated stations staffed by one or two people. The processes at each station are flexible and very different in terms of timing. 

Under the purview of modular assembly, all processes are subject to ongoing change and optimization. So if a new derivative, such as an e-tron model, is added to the line-up, it is absorbed into the process without any hassle.

Audi's endeavours to find its way around this modern way of making cars are another testament to its philosophy of 'Vorsprung durch Technik'. With that said, the existing Audi models also serve to demonstrate the company's commitment to the pursuit of technology and immaculate performance. Don't believe us? Get behind the wheel of one of these riveting examples of Audi's engineering prowess and see for yourself. To request Audi test drive or for information about any Audi price in India, visit the Audi Delhi Central Showroom.