Producing electric motors at the scale required today is quite the adjustment for a big legacy OEM like Ford. “The automotive mindset is that we want to be able to check that it’s a good part and verify that before we give it to the customer, but in many cases, you’re creating things that you can’t check unless you destroy the part,” said Chris White, electrification manager, manufacturing engineering during the recent AMS Livestream on electrifying production.

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This challenge was also acknowledged by Gareth Tomkinson, business development manager at Renishaw, adding: “Once these things are together – especially EV parts at the moment – they’re together for good; there’s no pulling them apart and making small adjustments.”

It means that manufacturers have to find ways to check during the manufacturing process that everything is done right – keeping tabs on the process, rather than the product, because otherwise they run the risk of producing scrap for hours.

Tracking the manufacturing process is not a small task, however. It effectively entails collecting data from every action and every sensor on the production line, and even environmental factors. In other words, the key is big data.

Small big data

Paradoxically, even big data tends to start small in a way, as both VW and Ford started with relatively limited pilot projects. At Volkswagen, the ‘Transparent Factory’ plant in Dresden was the first one to produce only fully electric vehicles, with the e-Golf, and is now the second location producing the MEB platform-based ID.3, after Zwickau.