It is a known fact that recently German car manufacturing giant, Volkswagen (VW) signed a multiyear agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to form Volkswagen Industrial Cloud (VIC). So, most people will have questions in their minds, like what is Volkswagen Industrial Cloud? What is the connection between a car manufacturer and the web service provider? Well, VIC is a cloud computing platform that’s used for streamlining the VWs manufacturing and logistics processes.
Cloud computing means using several remote servers in a network through internet to flexibly access large amount of computing data, instead of installing a local server. To achieve their goals AWS and VW need several specialists working in this project, if you wish to stand any chance to avail a spot to work under German Car manufacturing giant, AWS certification will help you take a step forward to it.
What is Volkswagen Industrial Cloud? And What’s it All About?
Oliver Blume, Head of Production at Volkswagen, gave a statement that the company’s prime competitive factor is to increase their production. And Blume, the VW’s head of brand Porsche, further added that they wish to develop an augmenting industrial system with efficiency and transparency that benefits each individual involved into it.
The Volkswagen’s chief aim is to assimilate all production level systems, machinery, and equipment which are using various software programs currently. Hence, the idea of Volkswagen Industrial Cloud emerged. Volkswagen Industrial Cloud (VIC) is a system that can streamline simplified data exchange between the production system and plants, thereby optimizing the work by apprehension and escaping the snarl ups.
In the initial phase, the VIC platform connects all the machines, systems, and plants of all global facilities of the company, including the subsidiary brands like Porsche and Audi. In the long run, Volkswagen likes to integrate all of their 1500 plus global partner and supplier chain companies which are present in 30,000 locations across the globe.
Furthermore, Volkswagen is in talks with some of the significant companies in the world asking them migrate to Volkswagen Industrial Cloud as its services will be provided as an open platform.
The Power of Amazon Web Services
Even though Amazon is a leading e-commerce company in the world, it’s tech division AWS has accomplished the spot of the biggest cloud provider in the world. According to the industrial experts, the estimated revenue of AWS by 2022 is going to reach $71 billion, which would make the total value of AWS division to be $350 billion!
As the Volkswagen and AWS collaborated recently, the fundamental task of AWS will be to gather Volkswagen’s real time data from their manufacturing plants. All the data collected is then analyzed and organized by the AWS’s Internet of Things (IoT) services.
In the recent events, Andy Jassy, the Chief Executive of AWS said that Volkswagen Industrial Cloud “will renovate the manufacturing and logistic processes”.
As mentioned before, to achieve the objectives of VIC is allocating around 220 computing specialists to work on this project in numerous German cities and also in future joint Industrial Cloud Innovation Center situated in Berlin. They are expecting to kickstart Industrial Cloud and its operational functions by the end of 2019.
VIC: A Start of New Industrial Era
Volkswagen has chosen to collaborate with AWS to rejoice the multiple services of AWS such as computing service, Internet of Things, machine learning analytics, which are essential for the production environment and are extended to serve the requirements of automotive industry. This platform is going to be the new Digital Production Platform (DPP) for Volkswagen. All manufacturing facilities and suppliers of VW across the globe will dock their architecture on to this platform. This is the chief platform to systemize and simplify the data exchange between the production plants and systems.
The VW and AWS collaboration happened at the critical stage of Volkswagen, which had grown out of its ‘Emission Gate Scandal’ (also known as Dieselgate emission scandal) and is planning to devise on future of mobility.
Albeit, Herbert Diess, the CEO is trying hard to push the limits of innovation at a higher pace and efficient production. Even though they successfully delivered 10.8 million cars last year which was 0.9 percent more than the previous, their operational margins slipped to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent in the last year. Keeping this drip aside, VW is focusing on streamlining the production to thrust the operation margin to 7.5 percent this year.
And more to it, the introduction of new CO2 emission laws by EU has made global automakers to significantly reduce their fleet emission, making it tougher for car makers in enhancing the production.
Because of this, Volkswagen came up with the idea of electromobility strategy with a desire of bringing up to 22 million electric cars to the roads within the next decade. To achieve this, Volkswagen has partnered with another US tech giant, Microsoft, which is hyped as “the largest digital ecosystem in the automobile industry”.
In 2018 September, the company had said that it is in the plans of jointly developing the “Volkswagen Automotive Cloud” on Microsoft Azure, which is a cloud platform for IoT.
And finally,
Since a while, the partnership between the software companies and automakers is progressively becoming the norm as the car drivers are fancying more about the dashboard apps and services than other features under the hood.
So, VW automaker joined hands with AWS to launch Volkswagen Industrial Cloud whose intention is to create a platform linking all of its suppliers and production facilities around the world.
Volkswagen has mentioned that its new series will come with charging and billing for the electric cars, e-commerce applications, telematics, and car sharing, combining the GPS mapping with on board diagnostics that enable fleet management and car assistance.
The VW teams, who are handpicked specialists, are already put into 140 projects for integration. You may think, what kind of projects? To define it telescopically, here’s an example. There’s a system that should trace the transfer of goods-in and goods-out from a factory. So, it’s the job of specialists to integrate Industrial Cloud with this system by the end of 2019.
Talha Ali is your tech generalist, covering a wide spectrum of topics within the ever-evolving world of technology. With a curiosity for the latest innovations, industry trends, and breakthroughs. Whether it’s hardware, software, emerging technologies, or the intersection of tech with daily life, Talha’s articles provide readers with a well-rounded perspective on the dynamic landscape of the tech industry.
