Both mobile and stationery high energy storage devices form a key element of electro-mobility and the energy turnaround to sustainable and renewable technologies. To that end, Siemens Industry Automation Division and M+W Group have joined forces with the aim to advance the development of production technology for battery manufacturing and develop a complete control technology solution for the mass production of large-size batteries. This includes the automation, monitoring and control of technical processes based on the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system and a Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

Using Siemens' established automation components from the production control groups “Simatic” and “WinCC” as a basis, a control technology solution concept will be developed. Under the terms of the deal, M+W Group will provide its technical expertise -- particularly in terms of optimizing complex production processes, including vertical integration. Likewise, Siemens will focus on devising a solution for automation and SCADA technology, whilst M+W Group's key contribution is the application-specific integration of the systems based on the Manufacturing Execution System “Simatic IT”.

The benefits of a superordinate process control solution enable the monitoring, analysis and control of processes from a central control room. In this way, process changes can be measured quickly, and the process realigned utilizing Automatic Process Control (APC) algorithms. Thanks to data management that encompasses all processes, the key influencing factors of the entire value-creation chain can be monitored with the one system and included in the controller. The thinking goes: consistently high and reproducible battery quality can be guaranteed with maximum process reliability.