Top battery company automates digital capture of 94% of available data to drive improvements
A top battery company that manufactures energy storage systems needed to streamline their manufacturing lines and R&D processes. So they turned to Peaxy Lifecycle Intelligence® for a scalable and secure manufacturing data collection system that enables downstream performance analysis.
1,700+
attributes digitally captured
94%+
of all parameters digitally threaded
25,000+
batteries digitally managed
5×
speed increase in data acquisition and verification
The Challenge
Needing to scale up production, the battery company built a new manufacturing facility in the United States. The various stations on the assembly line used machinery from different suppliers, each with data stored in siloed databases. Meanwhile, manufacturing progress for each battery was still being captured manually, as part of a paper-based process.
As a result, data capture was prone to human error. And when data was parameterized, it was not easily accessible across the enterprise. Performing root-cause analysis and other advanced reporting was a laborious and time consuming process, and since results lagged, problems with the assembly line were not always immediately discovered and fixed.
"With Peaxy’s Digital Traveler, we now have automated, granular data capture on our assembly lines, and full traceability of every factor of production going into our batteries."
- VP Quality & Environmental Health and Safety
The Solution
The Peaxy Lifecycle Intelligence (PLI) Digital Traveler module was added to the assembly line. Digital Traveler captures data for each battery serial number at each step in the manufacturing process, via user input validated at the point of entry or automated equipment feed, and securely stores it in the cloud. Using PLI, new types of data analysis become possible. For example:
- Finding all batteries built in a specific timeframe by a specific piece of equipment or lot, if quality control or warranty issues emerge later on.
- Letting the production manager identify equipment calibration and maintenance needs from real-time quality test results.
- Identify bottlenecks on the assembly line by looking at battery takt times for each station.
- Using machine learning to discover which factors of production most influence battery efficiency or longevity.
To automate the data capture process, we reconfigured the company’s data models and created custom data processing pipelines. In the R&D department, test data for new chemistries and manufacturing processes were parametrized and stored in a single global database accessible across the organization, enabling data access for executives and data engineers alike.
PLI was also deployed in the field and on testing systems, to capture operational data for each battery. PLI’s Battery Explorer module makes both the operational and manufacturing data available for querying to engineers, allowing them to create collections of batteries matching any combination of parametrized criteria, to perform root-cause analysis on the combined data set.
Operational data also drives PLI’s Battery Monitor, which provides the battery company with a live view into field-deployed batteries at customer sites. Visualizations of both live data streams and calculated cyclic data are available at all levels of the site hierarchy, and automated advanced reports provide insights that engineers previously spent hours per day preparing manually. These point and click reports with drilldown include dynamic health scores for each battery, updated daily from both operational and manufacturing parameters.
Results
- Digital capture of over 1,700 parameters per field-deployed battery — over 94% of all operational parameters. This includes automated factory acceptance tests (FAT), incoming and outgoing quality control (IQC, OQC), container loading details, and much more.
- Improved battery traceability and part provenance for all batteries assembled at the US-based plant. These manufacturing attributes are correlated to battery performance and operating conditions in the field, expediting any warranty issues that might arise.
- Enterprise-wide data accessibility for every level of the organization. One global, cloud-based source of truth for data drives insights for the CEO, engineers, operators and field technicians.
- Reduction in the likelihood of defects or batteries out of compliance with warranties leaving the manufacturing floor, mitigating the possibility of a product recall event.
1,700+
attributes digitally captured
94%+
of all parameters digitally threaded
25,000+
batteries digitally managed
5×
speed increase in data acquisition and verification
Let's put your data to work.
We provide full access to all battery data threaded by serial number, including dynamic RUL, degradation, and near-real-time digital twin computations for each serialized battery asset over the entire lifecycle, with point and click drilldown.
Our deployments are typically done in 120 days with greater speed than an in-house development effort or a generalized analytics platform.
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