Audi has officially opened a new pre-production centre in Ingolstadt following an investment of around EUR40m.
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The facility took 18 months to build and houses what Audi describes as a “unique organisation form that networks production and technical development, enabling products and processes to be verified earlier than ever”. 850 employees will be based at the new five-storey facility; they had previously been scattered throughout the plant.
By putting these departments together Audi is hoping that the quality and efficiency of the vehicle development process will be optimised.
“The early networking will help us to expand our model range to 40 top-quality models by 2015,” said Audi’s technical development board member, Michael Dick.
“In order to manufacture more efficiently, we must ensure that the automobiles can also be built reliably under production conditions. We therefore begin addressing production-related concerns as early as the prototype phase,” added production board member Frank Dreves.
Audi said the centre offers numerous technical development options. In the ‘cave’, for example, the feasibility of prototypes can be verified during the initial concept phase of a product using virtual reality techniques.
“The shortened communication paths enable the optimal networking of all departments involved in vehicle construction. These are intensively integrated into the construction of the automobile during the project phases prior to the start of series production,” said centre head Josef Habla.
An important criterion for networked cooperation was that technical development’s test vehicle construction and production’s pilot build shop were merged in the pre-production centre, Audi noted.
