BMW has revealed that artificial intelligence is already allowing it to cut costs at its sprawling factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The German car manufacturer has upgraded the factory over the last few years to incorporate some AI functionality. In the body shop, robots are tasked with welding 300 to 400 metal studs onto the frame of each SUV rolling down the line and now, these studs are inspected and checked by AI to ensure they’ve been placed correctly.
Speaking with CNBC, BMW Group Manager Curtis Tingle says that if the AI detects a stud that has been misplaced, the system will automatically tell the robot to fix it. This system has allowed BMW to remove six workers from the line and deploy them to other jobs. The tool is already saving the company over $1 million a year.
Read: BMW Has Started Building The 644 HP XM SUV In South Carolina
“It’s a fully closed loop,” Tingle described. “[AI] removes the human thinking, the human manual intervention, directly out of the equation. We’re achieving five times of what we thought was even possible before, with what the AI is achieving now.”
BMW has also introduced AI to improve its inspection process. The firm’s IT Project Lead, Camille Roberts, says that 26 cameras on the production line floor take photos of vehicles as they move down the line. AI then analyses these photos and determines if there are any issues that human workers need to fix.
Additionally, workers at the site wear factory scanner devices which take measurements and images of every inch of the factory. These images have then been used to create a digital twin of the factory where BMW can test any changes it wants to make in the virtual world to improve production efficiency before actually implementing these changes in the real world. The scanning devices mean the process of scanning the factory takes just days instead of months.
