Audi 2012 Annual Report Download - page 87

Fuel consumption and emission figures at the end of the Annual Report
It’s early morning, and the Audi
plant in Ingolstadt is unex pec t-
edly quiet – at least for people
who still think car manufac-
turing is a hectic, deafening
business and who have probably never
seen a modern automobile plant from
the inside.
The first surprise is in the press
shop, when visitors see steel sheet
being delivered – currently the most
im por tant material used in Audi car
production. Every day, the Ingolstadt
plant processes 1,700 tons of it to
make 530,000 individual stampings.
But the sheet metal, which arrives
as man-high coils, is first allowed to
recover from its journey. It is unrolled
and suspended over looping pits as
much as 12 meters deep, so that it can
“relax” before processing starts.
The press shop is also where the
factory tour begins. On this particular
morning, visitor guide Sabine Mayer has
welcomed rather more than two dozen
guests. In the next two hours they will
be given a close-up of how Ingolstadt
builds more than 2,500 A3, A4, A5, and
Q5 models every day. They will see in
detail how this mighty complex runs,
with the two assembly lines for the A4,
A5 and Q5 models and their derivatives
as examples.
The first evidence of production work
in progress is at one of the 18 press lines.
This is where the sheet metal blanks
that have previously been trimmed to
size are shaped by mechanical presses,
as tall as the average house. Up to
16 times a minute, they exert a force
equivalent to 70,000 kilonewtons on
the blanks placed inside them. If scarcely
any of this enormous force can be felt
it is because each press rests on giant
shock absorbers that cushion the
impact almost completely.
The press shop is a key production
area, where the dimensions of all the
body sections are determined with great
accuracy, so that all the subsequent
stages can take place at the same high
quality standard. How does Marco
Reischl, a group spokesperson in the
press shop, sum up the demands he
has to satisfy in his job? “The art is to
produce consistently high quality, while
continually optimizing the processes
and performing ongoing maintenance.”
The participants are clearly impressed
by what they see. Judith Jankowiak, a
student who is touring the plant with
her partner Andreas Frode, marvels:
“It’s not just the sheer precision that’s
Teamwork in an 88-second cycle: All the production processes come together in the final assembly area.
The add-on parts arrive at the line just before they are installed.
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