Audi Wins Digital Economy Award

Due to its efforts to become a digital car company, Audi has received the "Digital Economy" Award from Initiative Deutschland Digital in Bonn. The company won first place in the Company 4.0 category.

The Digital Economy Award is given to companies or organizations that use new digital technologies and business models to increase efficiency and value creation. There are four major categories: Customer experience, Product and Service Innovation, Company 4.0, and Digitized Business Model. The jury responsible for evaluating and picking award recipients come from the fields of business, science, and politics.

Audi won the award by making improvements to their production processes, making them more efficient, flexible and "fit for the future". Part of this can be attributed to push digitization and connectivity in production plants. For example, Audi plans to use a cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) platform, which was developed by a startup company named nextLAP in Munich. All production-relevant IoT objects such as robots, tablets, or cordless tools will be connected to the platform.

“In this way, we will reach the next stage of digitization, because all the data from production and logistics will be stored on the platform. This will allow us to implement complex production and logistics processes significantly faster, more flexibly and cost-effectively, and to optimize them holistically with intelligent algorithms,” stated Antoin Abou‑Haydar, Head of Vehicle Assembly Audi A4/A5/Q5, who accepted the prize on behalf of AUDI AG.

An example of this is the Smart Shelf, an intelligent pickby-light shelf. Prior to smart shelf, changes to the production speed often requires a tedious recalibration process that requires major technical and organizational efforts. The Smart Shelf's cloud-based platform allows workers to carry out assembly changes using a tablet. Machine settings and updates to workers are made immediately, minimizing interruptions during production.

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