02/06/2023

Bundled competence for battery production

“ENLARGE” project aims to pool European mechanical engineering companies and drive forward the digitalization of battery production

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At Schuler in Göppingen, the official kick-off meeting has now taken place for the project "ENLARGE – Interoperable Production as Enabler for a Data-Driven Battery Value Chain", which is publicly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and has the official funding code 03XP0539A. The aim is to pool the expertise of German and European companies in order to better serve the growing market for battery cell production equipment and to create a counterweight to established suppliers, especially from the Asian region. The project is scheduled to run for three years.

"The goal is flexible, networked and adaptive battery production," explains Dr. Hermann Uchtmann, who is responsible for corresponding solutions at Schuler. "This is the only way that mechanical and plant engineering in Germany and Europe will be able to bid for equipment for the gigafactories that are being set up around the world."

The ENLARGE project therefore aims to create uniform interfaces for data exchange. Based on existing standards such as EPCIS, ISO/IEC 19987, OPC UA and associated Companion Specifications (CS), a kind of meta-standard for battery cell production is being created in this way, which will facilitate the entry of suppliers and enable the networking of systems with each other. The project focuses on the use cases of traceability, battery passport and process optimization.

In addition to Schuler Pressen GmbH, project partners are FFT Produktionssysteme GmbH & Co. KG, European EPC Competence Center GmbH (EECC), Elabo GmbH, the German Engineering Federation (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau e.V.), the Fraunhofer Research Unit Battery Cell FFB, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, the wbk Institute for Production Engineering of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components (PEM) at RWTH Aachen University. Associated project partners include Siemens AG, SAUERESSIG Group, NanoFocus AG, SICK AG and Maschinenbau Kitz GmbH. Project Management Jülich (PtJ) represents the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in this function.