MT Magazine March/April 2022

TECHNOLOGY ISSUE

FEATURE STORY

14

1. Ninety-four percent of Robert Bosch GmbH is owned by Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH. Why is that interesting? Because the latter is a charitable foundation. 2. The company was established in 1886 by, well, 25-year old Robert Bosch, in Stuttgart, Germany, as the Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering. While precision mechanics had been around for quite a while, it is worth putting 1886 into context: MIT didn’t establish its electrical engineering curriculum until 1882, and Technische Universität Darmstadt established an electrical engineering school in 1883. Bosch was clearly at the leading edge of technology. Bosch today produces major home appliances, autonomous lawnmowers, e-bike drive systems, fuel injectors and fuel cells, and a wide variety more. What’s more, it makes equipment that it uses in its own factories to produce products, as well as provides it to others. Consider vehicle batteries. Bosch has a plant in Eisenach, Germany, where it makes 48-volt batteries for hybrid vehicles. As Rolf Najork, a member of the Bosch board of management responsible for industrial technology, puts it, “We know batteries like the back of our hand, as well as how they have to be manufactured.” Rather than holding that know-how close, Bosch is actually providing it to customers, such as Webasto, which operates a battery production operation in Schierling, Germany. Bosch provided automated assembly lines for welding and gluing the battery cells, which combine various functions (e.g., cell cleaning with incoming inspection, stacking, and laser welding). Bosch is making extensive use of digital technologies in

its operations, including Industry 4.0 technology that allows equipment to not only be networked but to optimize its capabilities in use. It has developed a manufacturing platform that combines software for production control, monitoring, and logistics planning. That, in turn, is connected to a larger database for purposes of analysis and fault detection. Presently Bosch has more than 120,000 machines connected, as well as 250,000 other devices (e.g., robots and inspection systems). There are 22,000 machine controllers connected with an in-house-developed Industry 4.0 software, Nexeed (which is also offered to other companies, such as BMW). What is it finding from its deployment of Industry 4.0? • Productivity increase of up to 25% While the company has some 250 plants, it selected one, the Feuerbach plant, as its Industry 4.0 lead operation. Notable about the plant is that it was actually established in 1909 by Robert Bosch, which makes it Bosch’s oldest plant. The facility, which is now a 1,174,342.63-square-foot operation, produces high-pressure pumps and components for automotive exhaust gas treatment. At the Feuerbach plant, there are some 550 machines connected. But they are taking connectivity to the next step, as it is also the Bosch lead operation for the deployment of 5G. One of the places where 5G is being used to good effect in the factory is in material handling operations, where they have deployed the “Active Shuttle,” an autonomous carrier that is capable of avoiding people, inventory, equipment, and other vehicles in the factory as well as traveling to the spot on the • Machine availability increase of up to 15% • Maintenance cost reduction of up to 25%