The Gigafactory race is on: how are Siemens and Capgemini accelerating the battery manufacturing industry

The battery industry faces a huge challenge to scale up its production capacity.

The need for batteries continues to surge with unprecedented growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs), the push for electrified public transportation, and increasing storage needs in the energy industry. The battery ecosystem is expected to receive an investment of more than $300⁽¹⁾ billion by 2030. To keep-up with the rapidly growing demand battery suppliers, EV and other manufacturers are looking for faster ways to build gigafactories and start industrialized operation. This means having battery manufacturing plants where GWh worth of battery capacity can be built and to rapidly increase production.

However, building and operating gigafactories at such a breakneck pace to meet these growing needs is not without challenges. Companies need to plan carefully to stay competitive and mitigate the risks associated with quickly expanding their high volume production battery plants. Speed is essential. Companies that can build batteries at scale and at cost first will take a large piece of the markets, while the later adopters might not survive.

Understanding the challenges

Producing batteries and their components is costly and highly complex. And as a multitude of new organizations race to market, even the incumbent players have acknowledged a need to modernize and transform their operations. The battery industry, collectively, are facing a multitude of challenges, but the main three are:

• Time-to-Market: It takes about 5 years from small-scale pilot factory to the completion of Gigafactory with stable production. Given the current demand for battery and battery components, this timeline is unacceptable. To remain competitive, manufacturing organizations need ways, to streamline their processes, to get gigafactories up and running faster at scale, and accelerate the replication to other locations.
• High scrap rate: It is not enough to start production in a gigafactory quickly. Today, far too many gigafactories suffer from a high scrap rate, above 30%. This waste and its associated costs are unsustainable from a business perspective, by 10% point scrap rate reduction save $200-$300⁽²⁾ million per annum for a 30GWh factory factory which largely pays off the initial investment. Beyond cost and delay, Gigafactories have a responsibility to become more sustainable, and reduce the environmental impact of these waste as scrap results in increased energy consumption and material losses.
• Traceability: The upcoming EU battery regulation is requiring traceability along the full battery value chain. Other parts of the world are sure to follow on similar lines. But besides this regulatory need for this complex process, understanding how to improve the battery product, manufacturing processes, and workflows requires the ability to look at every step of the production process from design to build. To do this, data needs to be collected, managed, and correlated. Associated AI algorithms need to be developed and trained. This is where traceability, together with data management, is key.

Leveraging a strong solution and implementation partnership

The powerful partnership between Siemens and Capgemini is boosting battery companies as they work to build gigafactories and ramp-up production. These two companies’ unique blend of technologies and professional services enables the battery industry to overcome the challenges fast and at scale, by for example:

• Taking a simulation-first approach to gigafactory development: By leveraging digital twins of the cell, pack and manufacturing processes as well as the gigafactory as a whole, organizations can design products virtually and commission optimal production lines, this minimizes the extensive prototyping process and avoids costly changes on the factory floor. With the digital twin primed, our collective solution saves twice the time during production ramp-up.
• Connecting the digital and physical manifestations of gigafactories: By integrating data from virtual and physical facilities, organizations can initiate end-to-end integration of the production process, accelerating physical commissioning. The integration of virtual and physical data identifies potential quality or production issues and helps organizations address these swiftly. Teams are supported physically on the shopfloor and digitally in the ramp-up with operations support for manufacturing at scale.
• Developing and deploying data-driven operations: Data and the use of AI are the backbone of productivity in gigafactory performance. The Siemens-Capgemini partnership starts from a data-centric architecture blueprint for the battery industry and associated ontologies, tailoring it to the clients best fit and requirements. Together, with end-to-end solutioning, deployment of hardware, software solutions, and services from enterprise level to shop floor are offered. This enables a fully data-driven operation with a closed loop, facilitates a highly scalable, flexible, and interoperable architecture. With this we can help companies achieve scrap rate reduction three times faster.
• Maintaining a secure platform: Cybersecurity is an ongoing concern. Organizations can ensure their gigafactories—and the vital data contained within—remain secure, by design and with associated operational cybersecurity services offered alongside.

But this isn’t all we offer. Siemens and Capgemini are providing even more to battery companies in terms of key capabilities. For example,  we are accelerating digital and procedural target blueprints, with standardized processes to support gigafactories seamlessly in the industrialization phase. This partnership enables organizations to efficiently implement end-to-end solutions that address the many challenges inherent to gigafactories — and help them remain competitive in a cutthroat marketplace.

Conclusion

To meet the growing demand for batteries, companies need to increase production quickly, cost-effectively, and on a large scale. Given the challenges include a need for speed, high scrap rate,  and quality increase, how can companies continue to grow? Traceability, sustainability, and a skilled workforce mean manufacturing organizations benefit. And when they leverage the expertise of partners who are well-versed in the risks and rewards involved with building, scaling, or transforming gigafactories, they can flourish. The partnership between Siemens and Capgemini offers companies a winning set of solutions, services, and industry know-how to help them reach their production goals and manufacturing targets.

To learn more about what Siemens and Capgemini’s revolutionary partnership can do for you, watch Puneet Sinha, Senior Director of Battery Industry at Siemens Digital Industries Software, and Pierre Bagnon, Vice President and Head of Intelligent Industry Accelerator at Capgemini, discuss the challenges and solutions involved with scaling gigafactory production to meet growing battery needs.

Sources :
(1)  IEA; Benchmarkminerals
(2) BatteryPower_Hitachihitech