Powering a leading carmaker's smart factory vision

Our client is a renowned carmaker who has always believed in technology to drive their quest for excellence. Their unwavering pursuit of Industry 4.0 goals testify to their unyielding commitment to innovation and their relentless drive to achieve excellence in automotive manufacturing.

In this transformative journey, their objective has been to enhance manufacturing operations by building a “Smart Factory” with excellence across four critical dimensions: safety, quality, productivity, and cost.

Nagarro has been the trusted partner to bring our client’s Industry 4.0 vision to life. The strategy included: 
  • Identification of key areas of maximum impact
  • Creation of a centralized IoT platform
  • Development of a comprehensive data strategy to complement the ecosystem
  • The creation of smart solutions to generate tangible benefits

Key pillars of our smart factory solutions

A smart automotive factory
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Business and technology strategy
Value levers
Workforce
Machines
Processes
Industry
Paint shops
Weld shops
Press shops
Smart Factory
Machining shops
Assembly
Dispatch
Safety
Quality
Productivity
Cost
Operational excellence areas

Business and technology strategy

We devised their strategy for data management and technology adoption on the factory floor. Click on the tiles to learn more.

Tech adoption strategy
Data management strategy
Tech adoption strategy

We, first, adopted a consultative approach to ensure alignment with the organizational objectives, foster collaboration and maximize transformative outcomes. We engaged with diverse stakeholders, conducted on-site plant visits, and interacted with factory teams.

Through our discovery workshops and assessment of the IT landscape, we defined the business goals, KPIs, and Industry 4.0 use cases. The outcome of this extensive exercise was a comprehensive, and actionable technology adoption roadmap, ready for implementation.

Data management strategy

The success of the program lay in crafting an efficient data management strategy. The complex web of systems, processes, and diverse access requests posed a challenge in establishing a standardized data management and fulfillment framework.

To surmount this challenge, we first developed detailed personas of the data consumers, highlighting their unique requirements and pain points.

Next, we devised a comprehensive data management strategy with standardized processes of data ingestion, validation, storage, transformation, and consumption. This approach not only addressed the key pain points of the consumer but also streamlined data operations to achieve excellence.

Value Levers

Each of these applications have directly impacted value levers and led to tangible results in the operational excellence areas. Click on the tiles to learn more.

Industrial robot health monitoring
Machining part quality assurance
Quality monitoring of continuous processes
Lifecycle management of serviceable components
Digital vehicle inspection process
Industrial robot health monitoring
The client relies on automation with multiple robots deployed at the weld shop. It is crucial to maintain robot uptime to ensure process continuity. Nagarro created a solution to optimize the robot's availability and streamline maintenance by leveraging data from embedded sensors to detect the robot's mechanical health in real-time. The captured parameters are plotted and compared against a standard allowing for early detection of failure of mechanical gearboxes, reducing unplanned repairs and production stoppages.
Operational excellence area impacted
Productivity
Cost
Value levers impacted
Machines
Processes
Machining part quality assurance
In manufacturing processes such as the production of engine blocks, monitoring the quality parameters of produced components allows the client to reduce quality defects and defective inventory. Nagarro’s solution pulls data on thousands of quality parameters for each component from various machine PLCs in real time and determines process stability using statistical measures of process capability and performance (Cp, Cpk). The insights generated help identify and prevent higher Cost of Quality (CoPQ) sources, such as quality defects and line stoppages.
Operational excellence area impacted
Quality
Productivity
Value levers impacted
Processes
Inventory
Quality monitoring of continuous processes
There are multiple continuous processes in automotive manufacturing, such as furnace operations or paint baths in a paint shop. These processes and the machines that run them continuously require constant monitoring of their process parameters to ensure quality end products. Nagarro created a solution that captures process quality parameters from various sources in real time and monitors them for quick anomaly detection. It identifies parameters likely to breach their control limits giving insights for robust processes that decrease Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) and number of quality defects.
Operational excellence area impacted
Quality
Producitivity
Value levers impacted
Machines
Processes
Lifecycle management of serviceable components
Ascertaining the remaining useful life (RUL) of components is important for proactive maintenance and increased machine working life. Nagarro created a solution that calculates the RUL of a component by tracking operational data from machines and maintenance activities in real-time. The solution helped reduce unplanned stoppages, address safety concerns from failing machines, and overall increase machine life by bringing efficiency in maintenance in the paint shop.
Operational excellence area impacted
Safety
Cost
Value levers impacted
Machines
Digital vehicle inspection process

Inspection processes are often labor-intensive and prone to errors. We built a digital solution to automate the inspection processes of ready-to-ship vehicles, which ensured robustness, transparency, and traceability. The solution’s modular design allows for quickly recording observations and capturing defects through photographs taken during inspections. The solution can also be adapted by other applications such as preventive maintenance or shifts changeover. The solution frees the workforce to focus on continuous improvement, increasing productivity, and decreasing operational costs through paperless processes.

Operational excellence area impacted
Quality, Cost
Productivity
Value levers impacted
Workforce
Processes

Operational excellence area

Each of these applications have directly impacted value levers and led to tangible results in the operational excellence areas. Click on the tiles to learn more.

Industrial robot health monitoring
Machining part quality assurance
Quality monitoring of continuous processes
Lifecycle management of serviceable components
Digital vehicle inspection process
Industrial robot health monitoring
The solution identifies deterioration in industrial robots deployed at the weld shop in real-time. The solution uses the robot's embedded sensors to plot data across the entire range of robot motion and compares it with prescribed standards. This helps detect glitches in the mechanical gearboxes that run each axis of the robot, reducing unplanned production stoppages and costly repair and rework.
Operational excellence area impacted
Productivity
Cost
Value levers impacted
Machines
Processes
Machining part quality assurance
The solution pulls data on thousands of quality parameters for each produced component from various machine PLCs to proactively detect quality defects in machined engine components. It provides insights to identify and prevent quality defects, line stoppages due to quality, and higher Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ). The solution uses statistical metrics such as process capability and performance (Cp, Cpk) to monitor process stability.
Operational excellence area impacted
Quality
Productivity
Value levers impacted
Processes
Inventory
Quality monitoring of continuous processes
For continuous processes such as the paint baths in an automotive OEM's paint shop, real-time monitoring of process parameters is important to ensure quality end products. This solution captures process quality parameters from various sources in the shop in real-time and monitors them for quick anomaly detection. Using prediction rules, it identifies parameters showing signs of possible control failure and notifies the user to take remedial action. The solution reduces the cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) line stoppages due to quality and reduces quality defects.
Operational excellence area impacted
Quality
Productivity
Value levers impacted
Machines
Processes
Lifecycle management of serviceable components
Nagarro created a solution that calculates a machine component's remaining useful life (RUL) by tracking machines' operational data in real time to aid effective machine maintenance. It automatically detects when a component has been replaced or serviced. The solution supports reducing unplanned stoppages, efficient component procurement planning, and addressing safety concerns from failing machines. It was first implemented in the paint shop.
Operational excellence area impacted
Safety
Cost
Value levers impacted
Machines
Digital vehicle inspection process
Nagarro created a solution that enables paperless inspection of ready-to-ship vehicles by quickly recording observations and capturing defects through a photograph to make the inspection process more robust, transparent, and traceable. The solution's modular design makes it compatible with various inspection and log-keeping scenarios, such as preventive maintenance, part quality inspection, or shift changeover records. It helps reduce manual effort, paper usage, and recording errors, thereby increasing productivity and overall operational costs.
Operational excellence area impacted
Quality, Cost
Productivity
Value levers impacted
Workforce
Process

Data and technology foundation

We created their underlying data warehouse architecture as well as their IoT platform for enabling quick deployment of applications. Click on the tiles to learn more.

The IoT Platform
Data-lake based BI platform
The IoT Platform

We harnessed Nagarro's IoT platform accelerator to streamline the entire data lifecycle, from acquisition and storage to management and consumption. Our solution not only consolidates data from various sources, including sensors, PLCs, and IoT devices but also optimizes the organization of domain-specific data for rapid access.

Edge device applications capitalize on this wealth of data for advanced analytics and AI/ML initiatives. The platform offers continuous health monitoring for the IoT ecosystem, streamlining onboarding and device upgrades, and managing massive daily data ingestions from numerous process shops located in diverse manufacturing sites. This eliminates data silos, empowers real-time alerts, and fuels data-driven decision-making.

Data-lake based BI platform

On the data front, we implemented standardized frameworks for data fulfilment and a secure methodology to govern data generation, sharing, and consumption.

We architected a scalable platform for data-driven business intelligence solutions. This platform features unified dashboards, offering a comprehensive health and cost report of cloud resources across accounts, projects, and cloud services with thresholds to monitor usage.

Furthermore, the platform introduces a critical layer of data quality assurance by monitoring the accuracy of ML models and the early detection of anomalies. It significantly amplifies enterprise-level visibility into data and service health, driving enhanced efficiency and productivity.

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Forging the next milestone 

This engagement was unique as it allowed us to drive innovation at every stage. We collaborated closely with the client, delving deep into their value chain and processes, becoming their sound board for all planned future endeavours in industry 4.0. We also partnered with their vendors and their in-house startup incubator to seamlessly integrate them into the new ecosystem. Our CARING approach has cultivated a special partnership where we continue to drive excellence in innovations.

Connect with us

Talk to our automotive experts to learn more