Because it’s easy to get distracted by a gigafactory’s sheer size, potential participants may overlook important differences in what they need and how to implement them compared to regular facilities. This makes it crucial to think about gigafactories differently, according to Alec Falzone, gigafactory vertical leader for the Americas at Honeywell Process Solutions.
“Ramping up a gigafactory is very difficult,” Falzone began in his Gigafactory Day presentation at the 2024 Honeywell Users Group conference this week in Dallas. “It can take five to seven years to reach nameplate capacity, so developers start to focus on production targets from Day 1.”
“It also helps to think of a gigafactory’s similarities to a NASA-style mission into space. What users want to do and how they want to manufacture are based on product designs and production plans,” Falzone explained. “In a gigafactory, these items join many other compartmentalized steps because its operators will likely need visibility into the three batches prior to the one they’re working on. This presents challenges with plenty of risk, as well as opportunities with lots of rewards.”
Falzone reported that work cells in gigafactories can adapt aerospace principles, such as mission planning and scheduling, flight dynamics, data analytics, telemetry, communication systems, mission safety—and patience, too. In a gigafactory that makes batteries, for example, its mission components from raw materials to finished products would include planning and scheduling, quality management, data analytics, people and safety, material handling, and energy and utilities.
“There are many delays in preparing for space flights because there are many safety and other issues that can impact them,” explained Falzone. “There are many static tasks in a gigafactory, but there are also dynamic tasks that constantly change and require time and support to resolve.”
Downstream processes for making batteries are affected by those upstream. “And if you can’t get the upstream mixing done right, you can’t make batteries,” Falzone said. “However, until recently, data silos meant that many users could only get information for individual areas, even though it’s more helpful to have a visualization of the process immediately upstream of you. The same is true for manufacturing in general, which is why users in centralized operations want a holistic view that lets them see everything from start to finish.”
Opportunity knocks on gigafactory door
Beyond their obvious production capabilities, Falzone reported that gigafactories can provide many beneficial opportunities that are often sacrificed by traditional manufacturing settings. These losses include:
- Up to 70% data gathered by many businesses remains unused;
- Only 60% of nameplate capacity for first-year plants is caused by low startup yields, higher-than-expected yield losses and equipment downtime;
- Downtime costs of about $4 million per lost production day for a typical, 50 GWh facility; and
- Up to 80% time lost on preparing data before being able to produce insights
“Data is crucial from the get-go, and the pillars it goes into are quality for mass production, safety for work zones and products, and efficiency that still meets specifications,” said Falzone, who added that operational reality checks inside gigafactories consist of complex, multi-vendor production assets, steep learning curves, unpredictable raw-material quality, lots of walking needed to reach upstream and downstream processes, and standard operating procedure (SOP) and management of change (MoC) issues.
Meanwhile, other manufacturing realities and requirement in gigafactories include:
- Proof of regulatory compliance for more than 10 years, which in turn requires good documentation, traceability and genealogy of work cells and production processes;
- Data integrity and cybersecurity maintained onsite, so it’s not accessible from the outside;
- Audit tracking and continuous reporting;
- Speedy and well-informed decision-making; and
- Quick reviews and released of materials and products downstream.
Falzone added that mass-production realities in gigafactories mostly start with batch processes, which translate into roll-to-roll processes, then move to discrete-assembly, high-pass and high-volume applications, and end up as continuous processes by multiple cells. Because gigafactories must accommodate all types of manufacturing, its mass-production realities include:
- Pilot approaches that users can build themselves with limited automation and standalone enterprise resource planning (ERP) software;
- Generic manufacturing execution systems (MES) that can be customized, supported for the long term and maintain a significant ERP footprint and interfaces; and
- Requirements for a fast startup, such as an industry-specific MES and quality management system (QMS), agile production management, simple ERP footprint, and artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and cybersecurity readiness.
Enter Battery MXP
Honeywell’s Battery Manufacturing Excellence Platform (Battery MXP) is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software solution designed to address many of these challenges, optimizing the operation of gigafactories from day one by improving battery cell yields and expediting facility startups for manufacturers.
Battery MXP incorporates AI techniques in the manufacturing process, which enables the detection and remediation of quality issues before they result in scrapped material. The solution then utilizes machine learning to identify conditions that lead to quality issues and turns this data into action-oriented insights that manufacturers can use to improve efficiency and productivity.
By delivering powerful data that can improve quality control and decision making on the plant floor, Battery MXP is designed to help manufacturers cut production ramp-up time, reduce startup material scrap rates by 60% and increase delivery rates to meet the growing demand for lithium-based batteries.
By providing bidirectional traceability and genealogy, Battery MXP tracks battery cells from raw material to finished product in real time, helping to ensure product quality at every step. The solution also helps to address other key challenges faced by battery manufacturers by offering solutions for process controls, workforce management and thermal runaway battery fire prevention. These safety elements aid both operators in the gigafactory and end-users of the batteries to stay safe.
“Battery MXP is configurable for individual processes and facilities,” added Falzone. “It provides ‘one pane of glass’ with permission-based dashboards detailing gigafactory operations.”
