How new tech is solving EV supply chain issues

E-mobility has become the key challenge in the automotive and lithium-ion battery industries to support global decarbonization trends and ensure future survival.

Existing production systems, even if well-established, need to be reshaped to address the manufacturing of completely new platforms that will form the basis of future model ranges. To do this, more responsive, effective and agile operations are required.

EV and battery manufacturers face several challenges. They should scale up production to meet rising demands. Companies also need to strike a delicate balance between delivering high-quality products and maintaining the shortest cycle times while reducing costs.

Furthermore, they need to optimize energy and resource efficiency while ensuring the level of flexibility required to customize their solutions.

Changing landscapes

Battery factories and car assembly plants, in particular, handle large volumes of real-time traffic from various shop floor and supervisory systems. Data sharing between processes on a manufacturing line or with IT systems is of particular importance to deliver the shortest cycle times.

In addition, as factories become smarter, more devices and data processing tools are being added to communication networks for monitoring and decision-making purposes that optimize processes.

These also include nodes that do not typically belong to the operational technology (OT) domain, such as software solutions from the information technology (IT) realm.

The power of TSN

Time-sensitive networking, or TSN, is a network technology designed to advance industrial ethernet communications. As such, it presents a game-changing solution to address the challenges faced by manufacturers across the entire EV value chain.

First of all, TSN allows control over transmission delays, jitter and latency, ensuring deterministic real-time operation, hence, tight management of cycle times and therefore productivity.

Secondly, by including IEEE 802.1 standards for synchronization and queuing, it provides the foundation for convergent network architectures.

This is especially important, as it means previously separate networks and their traffic can now be combined into a single one. As a result, a significant increase in the transparency of processes can be achieved, and therefore the ability to optimize them in the most effective way.

A converged architecture also provides the opportunity for simplified expansion of networks, providing the opportunity to integrate more automated setups. By doing this, manufacturers can create more agile, responsive and productive operations.

The ability to handle large volumes of data from disparate data sources also means that TSN is crucial for merging IT and OT traffic. This opens up multiple opportunities, such as tighter integration between the IT world and the shop floor. Therefore, it is possible to set up smarter operations that leverage artificial intelligence (AI).
Greener automotive future

The integration of TSN in industrial communications offers a transformative solution to the key challenges experienced by manufacturers across the e-mobility value chain, especially battery and EV producers.

Embracing TSN will undoubtedly help drive the transition to a greener and more sustainable automotive future, delivering high-quality, customizable EVs at high speed to meet increasing demands.