One of my favorite projects is also a wonderful use case to analyze if Industrial Cloud is feasible. With my background in the automotive industry and industrial automation, it should be no surprise that this relates to car part manufacturing. After joining AWS re:invent as analyst where I focused on Industrial Machine Learning and Cloud in Manufacturing, I decide to revisit this project and give you an update on this USE CASE. After a very successful pilot project to optimize the process of filling casting machines with liquid aluminum, the team was eager to bring the solution to other facilities. And with that goal in mind, the team also realized that it was necessary to automate the learning process.

Quality has always been part of Audi's DNA, and it's also the aim of a pilot project launched last year at the Neckarsulm site to check the correct execution of spot welds in high-volume production. The partners in this project, which is part of the Volkswagen Group's Industrial Cloud which is to be implemented in other plants, are Siemens and Amazon Web Services. In the body of a car like the Audi A6, around 5,300 spot welds are required. Up until now, the quality of the welds has been monitored manually by technicians using ultrasound on the basis of random analyses. In the WPS Analytics pilot project, in which specialists from the fields of manufacturing, innovation management, planning, digitization and IT are involved, artificial intelligence is used to detect quality anomalies automatically and in real time.

A pilot project being conducted at Audi's Neckarsulm site is using artificial intelligence to control the quality of spot welds in high-volume production. The solution is being advanced together with Siemens and Amazon Web Services as part of the Volkswagen Group's Industrial Cloud, and is set to be rolled out at other locations. Around 5,300 spot welds are required to join the parts that make up the body of an Audi A6. Up until now, production staff use ultrasound to manually monitor the quality of resistance spot welding (abbreviated WPS in German) processes on the basis of random analyses. However, experts from the fields of manufacturing, innovation management, digitalization planning, and IT are currently testing a much smarter way of determining the quality of spot welds at the Neckarsulm site.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, at left, with Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. (Photo: Brian Smale) Microsoft and GE are joining forces for new cloud technologies that will bring improved use of big data to production. GE will bring its Predix industrial data-gathering operating system to Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, the two companies announced Monday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. The deal is the first in a planned strategic partnership between GE and Microsoft. "Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement announcing the partnership. "Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business -- from the factory floor to smart buildings."