Profile of location

The Audi Neckarsulm site has been manufacturing cars for over 100 years. Driven by innovative ideas, passion, and the pursuit of perfection, the location has developed from its beginnings as a knitting machine workshop to a modern car manufacturing site.

AUDI AG is one of the largest employers in the Heilbronn-Franken economic region. 15,515 people work here for the Mobility of the Future. On an area of approximately one million square meters, the company produces a wide variety of cars: the A5, A6, A7, A8, and e-tron GT and all their variants. At the Böllinger Höfe industrial park near Heilbronn six kilometers away, AUDI AG adds approximately 300,000 more square meters to its Neckarsulm footprint. This is where Audi Sport GmbH has its headquarters, and is also the birthplace of the fully electric Audi e-tron GT.

The Neckarsulm plant has the structures and abilities needed for both small-series and volume production. With a differentiated portfolio of highly efficient combustion-engine models, hybrid technology, and its all-electric model, the site is set for the future.

Audi Forum Neckarsulm is making a mark in the region and far beyond it. Since its opening in May 2005, more than three million people have visited this brand experience center. Over more than 10,000 square meters, customers, visitors, and fans can discover the magic of the Audi brand, the company, and the Neckarsulm site.

• This is where new car owners come to pick up their Audi. Exhibits offer insight into the company’s history and its current product range and production. The Audi Exclusive Studio offers comprehensive services that go far beyond the design options of the standard series.
• The conference center provides business customers a space for meetings and creative workshops.
• The in-house restaurant Nuvolari offers high-end dining.
• The Audi Forum is a brand experience world and also the gateway to the site. From here, experience tours through the plant begin. Tour guides provide participants with insights into automobile production and bring them closer to the site and its special features. The interactive online offering AudiStream also enables a virtual window into the production processes at the Neckarsulm site.
• The building also doubles as a venue for a variety of cultural events, from book readings to concerts and technology workshops.

Technical Development

Technical Development at Neckarsulm is where cutting-edge drive concepts are created. In addition to efficient combustion engines and hybrid systems, the development of the high-voltage battery portfolio for fully electric vehicles is also a key focus there. This means Technical Development will continue to grow and strengthen in the future.

• New high-end building for Technical Development: The new Technical Development building will serve as a pilot space and think tank for new, efficient ways of working. Here, Technical Development experts will collaborate under one roof in modern office spaces, workshops, and test stands. In planning the more than 600 workspaces, the focus was on ease of information transfer and communication, as well as on optimal organization of the various divisions within Technical Development. As a result, the office floors offer different zones that provide the perfect environment for productivity, for creative workshops, and even for technical exchanges in a more relaxed atmosphere. Competence Center for high-voltage batteries: Audi is expanding high-voltage battery development and is focusing on the Neckarsulm site. In the battery technology center, employees are testing new high-voltage storage modules for various electric vehicles. The newly established expertise in high-voltage batteries in Neckarsulm also benefits from synergies with the lightweight construction center at the site.
• The right material in the right place in the right amount: The engineers in Audi’s light-construction center develop not only for the Audi brand, but for the entire Group. This requires finding solutions to the requirements of models with alternative drive systems, such as the battery housing for electric models.
• The goal is to design a car body that is as light and stable as possible while remaining cost-efficient. The body of the future will therefore consist of an intelligent mix of materials. The development of parts now employs simulation models depicting a digital twin of the real cars. This allows us to bring new technologies to mass production using a minimum number of test vehicles.

Group Competence Center for Fuel Cell Technology: In the Fuel Cell Technology Center, Audi develops, manufactures, and checks fuel cells to continuously optimize properties relevant to their application, such as efficiency, service life, and profitability.

Production and logistics

The great variety of models produced at the site is enabled by closely coordinated processes in production and logistics. The Audi Supply Chain communicates our customers’ needs to the plants, co-ordinates with approximately 1,000 suppliers, and finally delivers the cars to the customers. In this way, it ensures that vehicle production and market supply are punctual, flexible, and efficient. What it takes is speed, transparency, reliability, and digital factory transformation.

Audi employees at the Neckarsulm site work continuously to optimize processes and develop innovative IT solutions that advance digitalization in production andlogistics. Böllinger Höfe also plays a special role here: this small-series production facility is involved in innovative pilot projects. Intelligent solutions for the fully connected and smart factory are tested, refined, and ultimately adapted there for large-volume production in the Neckarsulm plant.

• New paint shop: The overhaul of the paint shop at the Neckarsulm site will be completed in 2025. The new base coat facility opened in 2024, followed by the top coat facility within an existing building receiving a new structure. This optimizes processes and implements environmentally friendly procedures. The facility sets new standards in the automotive industry through sustainable technologies and processes and is suitable for both combustion and electric vehicles. 
• Pearl chain principle: An algorithm calculates the best sequence for the assembly line from nearly two trillion possibilities six days in advance, following the pearl chain principle. The algorithm uses information on ordered cars while taking into account the associated workload for the employees in all work areas so they can be utilized most effectively.
• Using data to optimize processes: An interdisciplinary project team within Audi Supply Chain at the Neckarsulm site is exploring how to use data to further optimize the management of a plant. To do this, Audi Supply Chain uses the largest possible database, including data from suppliers and forwarding agents as well as congestion information. Data like this from the entire production value chain promotes the transparency of supply chains and the accuracy of predictions.
• Smart logistics: Audi has been using automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for the automated transport of parts and vehicles in its production buildings since 2017. The goal is a fully automated supply chain.
• On the road to the fully connected factory: In early 2021, Neckarsulm became the first automobile plant in the Volkswagen Group to use RFID technology (RFID = radio frequency identification) to identify vehicles throughout the entire production process. The site thus laid another cornerstone for fully connected production.
• Digital Ecosystem: As part of the Automotive Initiative 2025, Audi is working closely with the Technical University of Munich, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, and other partners at the education campus in Heilbronn to advance digital factory transformation. As an active member of the Innovation Park for Artificial Intelligence (IPAI), the company contributes to the content in the relevant clusters.
• Step by step to the smart factory: The real lab in Böllinger Höfe and the digital ecosystem in Heilbronn provide Audi with ideal on-site conditions for advancing the transformation to a digital factory. Together with partners from science and IT, Audi is testing digital solutions for the production of premium vehicles in a real manufacturing environment in Neckarsulm.
• Edge Cloud 4 Production: In the shape of the local server solution Edge Cloud 4 Production, Audi is shifting the paradigm in automation and laying the foundation for the future use of artificial intelligence. Centralized control via servers brings more process security and reduces maintenance effort. After successful testing in the Audi Production Lab (P-Lab), the Edge Cloud is now in series operation at the Böllinger Höfe assembly. Going forward, Audi will roll out this innovation to other plants within the group.
• Smart maintenance: The “Predictive Maintenance” project at the Neckarsulm site makes upkeep on production facilities more efficient and reduces downtime in production. Maintenance experts collect and interpret associated data and can predict and even partially prevent wear on production equipment.
• One pilot project is using artificial intelligence (AI) to control the quality of spot welds in high-volume production. The long-term vision is that in the future, the quality of welding processes can be controlled automatically and continuously optimized. Up until now, production staff have used ultrasound to manually monitor the quality of resistance spot welding (abbreviated WPS in German) processes on the basis of random analyses. As part of the “WPS Analytics” pilot project, a team of experts is using AI to detect quality anomalies automatically and in real time.