Shift Magazine - March 2021 - S11

REAL-TIME IMPROVEMENTS

Mikula said that Ford has spent a lot
of time and effort giving its vehicles the
capability to communicate wirelessly. He
said the insight Ford gains on how these
vehicles are performing in the field can be
incorporated into engineering and manufacturing " so that we can continuously
improve the value of the experiences that
people are having. "
That also opens the possibility of predictive or preventative maintenance, said Ken
Obuszewski, general manager, automotive
vertical, at NetApp. " And if you're able to
make a real-time update to the car where
you're improving fuel efficiency, imagine
the consumer seeing that and seeing how
they're getting real-time improvements in
their car. I think that will really be valuable
to create customer affinity. "
Information uploaded from connected-car sensors could tell the automaker
that it needs to tune the vehicle to give
it a better ride, smarter safety systems,
more range or efficiency, a higher-capacity HVAC system, longer service intervals
or even more seat travel.
And automakers can charge for such
enhancements.
" The cost of the vehicle is no longer
the [bill of materials] cost, " observed Tara
Prakriya, general manager for Azure IOT
at Microsoft. " The cost of the vehicle is
over the lifetime. So you must consider

them using sensors and a computerized
data-communications link. This " digital
thread " is the golden element in digitized
manufacturing. Other critical elements
are high-integrity cloud storage, software,
advanced analytics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and a work force trained
to use a digital manufacturing process.
Feeding positive and negative data
back to managers helps fine-tune manufacturing and speed product enhancements, some of which can be made on
the spot.
That means lower costs, higher consumer satisfaction and greater profit. It
also means that the end of the assembly
line is no longer the end of production or
revenue.

" The cost of the
vehicle is no longer
the [bill of materials]
cost. The cost of the
vehicle is over the
lifetime. "
Tara Prakriya, Microsoft

that connected vehicle, autonomous
development and continuous updates
and all of that. So now the revenue lines
from digital services have to match that
[lifetime]. "
Secondary enterprises such as insurance providers are already using uploaded
information on location, braking, acceleration, accident severity and usage periods
to adjust rates. And information downloaded to a connected vehicle can alert
owners to mechanical issues; retune
braking, handling or power; and provide
city-parking tips and the location of electric vehicle charging stations.
But what will customers pay?
" So far, I think with some of the early
steps, where we've struggled is to find
compelling value propositions for end
consumers, " said Nigel Tracey, vice president of Real Time Application Solutions
at Etas. " But to develop something that's
safe and works reliably takes money. And

if the uptake is very low, then the amount
you need to charge to get profit on that
is high. "
Connecting all the elements along this
" digital thread " and making them work
effectively and affordably is not always
easy.
Some panelists cited a lack of standardization in the hardware, software and middleware that enable the feedback loop.
Industry players don't want to give up
their unique system architectures, operating systems and software languages.
So, " the tricky part is, how do you
get the industry to come together? "
said Obuszewski. " I think there's certain standards that have been successful, things like CAN [the Controller Area
Network], but there's others that haven't
been successful, things like infotainment
architectures. "

COMPUTER REPLICAS

At the factory, digitization requires
developing computer models, or " digital twins, " that mimic the physical parts
of the product and the enterprise. This
means creating, with the help of sensor
data, exact computer replicas of tools,
work and storage space, and the dynamics in the linked production processes
and the product. Messages from the
" twins " fuse the physical world with the
platform's virtual world.
Clearer messages are better. The quality of management decision-making is
only as good as the data provided and
analyzed.
" We're on a journey going from a lower-resolution digital twin to our processes
to a very high-resolution and very tuned
version, " Mikula explained.
" And we have now tended to evolve
and shift our focus on a proper digital
twin that can really give us some insight
into meaningful experiences for consumers and route the data to the proper
place, to perform the right level of analytics, and then to drive that into engineering to make better decisions on Ford
programs. " n
march 2021 * shift

Shift Magazine - March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - March 2021