ENLARGE project focuses on the digitalisation of battery production

The partners of the ‘ENLARGE’ project are advancing the digitalisation of the battery production process chain. Photo: Schuler

At Germany-based Schuler, the first official meeting to accelerate the ‘ENLARGE — Interoperable Production as Enabler for a Data-Driven Battery Value Chain’ project has taken place and will run for three years. Publicly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the project aims 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.

Dr Hermann Uchtmann, who is responsible for Schuler’s input into the project, said: “The goal is flexible, networked and adaptive battery production. 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 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 formulated, 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 optimisation.

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 eV), 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).