Audi Employees Were Inventive Again in 2020

Audi Employees Were Inventive Again in 2020 - The Audi Ideas Program successfully completed the coronavirus year with over 15,000 ideas and saved more than 94.5 million euros

One exemplary idea came from Audi Neckarsulm: in the bodywork shop where the Audi A6 is made, a robot takes roof frames from a drawer, places them on the bodywork and then welds the two parts together. It repeatedly happens that the robot’s arm takes hold of several metal sheets at once, which cannot be inserted and processed correctly. This led to loss of materials again and again, and to maintenance costs at the same time. Several inventive employees at Audi Neckarsulm have now improved this process. The resulting solution is both simple and brilliant: by means of an additional magnetic sensor on its arm, the robot now recognizes that the parts are doubled and separates them with a jet of air. And no more metal sheets are wrongly inserted. In this way it was possible to increase the capacity of the plant considerably. The idea has now been implemented not only in Neckarsulm, but also in Ingolstadt.