Against the backdrop of climate change and the energy transition, partially and fully electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular: in Germany, the number of new registrations rose to more than 63,000 in 2019, tripling since 2015 (source: Statista). The aim of the AgiloDrive project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is to be able to produce electric motors in variable technology and quantities economically in Germany in the future. The researchers are working with business partners to develop innovative modular product kits and production technologies, which will then be transferred directly to industry. The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor and Housing is now funding the pilot phase of the project with around one million euros.
Today, electric motors are usually either manufactured in small quantities and with low productivity - this is done in semi-automated workshops and involves some manual process steps - or in highly specialized and very inflexible transfer lines. In addition, teams of experts usually work on specific individual areas of industrial development processes for electric motors - a transfer to other areas rarely takes place.
The aim of the AgiloDrive research project is to develop an innovative, agile production system based on modular product and production-specific technologies. "In this way, we want to make it possible to produce electric motors so flexibly in the future that a wide range of variants, technologies and quantities can be manufactured at any time - with cost-effective operation. This means that cost-reducing economies of scale can also be used across different product series and production technologies," says Professor Jürgen Fleischer, Head of the wbk Institute of Production Engineering at KIT.
AgiloDrive is a cross-institute project of the KIT Center for Mobility Systems. The project is led by the wbk, with the Institute of Product Development and the Institute of Electrical Engineering also involved. Partners from industrial practice are Schaeffler Automotive Buehl GmbH Co. KG, Gehring Technologies GmbH and the state agency e-mobil BW GmbH as an associated partner. The partners are pooling their expertise along the entire development process as well as the supply and process chain. The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor and Housing is funding the pilot phase of the AgiloDrive research project with around one million euros.
Agile production system at the heart of the project
"An agile production system based on an integrated product development process is crucial to the economic success of the flexible solution approach," explains Fleischer. The versatile system is characterized by modular processing modules, standardized interfaces and scaling concepts. It can therefore react flexibly to changing market and technological requirements. This reduces the entrepreneurial risk, as investments can be dynamically adapted to actual demand thanks to the modular structure and costs can also be saved across different product series and production technologies. "This means that electromobility can be economically integrated into the energy and mobility transition despite volatile markets," says Professor Thomas Hirth, Vice President of Innovation and International Affairs at KIT.
The AgiloDrive project team is working simultaneously on three sub-projects: firstly, on an integrated product kit based on modular, future-proof kit structures and flexible development and design methods. The second sub-project is concerned with the necessary structures and technologies for flexible systems. In the third sub-project, the aim is to introduce the production system using agile project management methods so that the findings of the research project can be implemented on an industrial scale during development. In addition, the partial solutions and the overall system of the agile product development and production process will be validated both technically and economically. "Investments in production facilities must be cost-effective. To achieve this, long-term high capacity utilization must be ensured, even if the volumes called up by customers for individual applications remain volatile," says Thomas Pfund, Head of the E-Motors and Power Electronics business division at Schaeffler Automotive.
The results of the AgiloDrive project are to be made available to industry in order to quickly implement the solution approaches in further, self-financed projects. "Medium-sized machine and plant manufacturers and suppliers in particular can use the agile production system to successfully complete the transformation process towards electromobility and participate in the new markets," says Dr. Sebastian Schöning, CEO of Gehring Technologies. The research project is thus making an important contribution to securing Germany's position as an automotive and mechanical engineering location throughout Germany and in particular in Baden-Württemberg, which is heavily affected by the transformation process.
