New cooperation: Digital transformation for die casting

Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion and Siemens have coop­er­at­ed to devel­op arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) that can pre­dict prod­uct abnor­mal­i­ties in alu­minum die cast­ing, a key process in auto­mo­tive air con­di­tion­ing com­pres­sor pro­duc­tion ‑also to sup­port their goal of man­u­fac­tur­ing qual­i­ty parts.
The devel­op­ment is one of the world’s first to use defect pre­dic­tion AI for die cast­ing. It improves qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by uti­liz­ing the AI appli­ca­tion in Indus­tri­al Edge, the Siemens edge com­put­ing plat­form for indus­try. The ini­tia­tive is an inno­v­a­tive exam­ple of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in man­u­fac­tur­ing, and Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion aims to use it to fur­ther evolve their tech­nol­o­gy and incor­po­rate it into their pro­duc­tion plants in Japan and over­seas. Siemens hopes that more busi­ness­es in the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try will adopt their dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automa­tion solu­tions such as Indus­tri­al Edge.
The die cast­ing process is chal­leng­ing to man­age due to a range of con­stant­ly chang­ing pro­duc­tion con­di­tions such as vari­a­tions in the molten alu­minum tem­per­a­ture or the injec­tion rate. Suc­cess relies on the judge­ment of expe­ri­enced work­ers, and some­times the parts require sec­ondary pro­cess­ing to han­dle abnor­mal­i­ties and main­tain high qual­i­ty standards.
Dur­ing devel­op­ment, the two com­pa­nies used a Siemens Simat­ic S7-1500 con­troller to gath­er big data total­ing approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 data points per die cast­ing shot at the mod­el line and then ana­lyzed the data using AI tech­nol­o­gy. They suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing defects and improv­ing qual­i­ty by mon­i­tor­ing the pro­duc­tion sta­tus in real time and auto­mat­i­cal­ly pre­dict­ing equip­ment abnor­mal­i­ties that lead to qual­i­ty issues. The pro­duc­tion data is processed by the defect pre­dic­tion AI on Indus­tri­al Edge, enabling instant analy­sis of the data on pro­duc­tion con­di­tions at the time of a shot and assess­ment of the part qual­i­ty imme­di­ate­ly after the cast­ing. This series of AI tech­nolo­gies boosts pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, improves qual­i­ty, and trans­forms how oper­a­tors work
Alu­minum die cast­ing is a high-speed mold­ing process in which molten alu­minum is shot into a die at high pres­sure. It is ide­al for the accu­rate man­u­fac­ture of met­al cast parts that demand high dimen­sion­al pre­ci­sion, and there­fore is often used for auto­mo­tive parts that require high qual­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty. The alu­minum die cast parts made at the Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion pro­duc­tion plant in Obu, Japan, have excel­lent air­tight­ness and high pres­sure resis­tance. They are essen­tial for the high­qual­i­ty Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion com­pres­sors used in auto­mo­tive air con­di­tion­ing, a field in which they proud­ly hold the largest share of the glob­al market*.
Siemens aimed to con­tribute to oper­a­tional improve­ments with Siemens Indus­tri­al Edge, while Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion aimed to increase qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The align­ment of these goals with the die cast­ing process led to this devel­op­ment, dur­ing which they demon­strat­ed proof of con­cept across two years and achieved a suc­cess­ful out­come. Based on this result, they will con­tin­ue pur­su­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in order to pro­vide bet­ter prod­ucts for their cus­tomers through­out the world.

 
“Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a game chang­er. I am delight­ed to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion in this rev­o­lu­tion­ary endeav­or and to work togeth­er to forge the future. We will con­tin­ue to devel­op and pro­vide solu­tions for indus­tries incor­po­rat­ing the lat­est tech­nolo­gies and to con­tribute to opti­mized and sus­tain­able manufacturing.”
— Rain­er Brehm, CEO of Fac­to­ry Automa­tion, Siemens AG

 
“It is sig­nif­i­cant that Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed AI tech­nol­o­gy and achieved out­comes in the die cast­ing process, which is where impor­tant com­pres­sor parts are pro­duced. I am also proud that we have con­tributed to the prac­ti­cal use of Indus­tri­al Edge, the Siemens edge com­put­ing plat­form for indus­try,” says Yuji Ishiza­ki, Senior Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Mem­ber of the Board and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Com­pres­sor Divi­sion, Toy­ota Indus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion. “We will con­tin­ue to offer new val­ue for cus­tomers and to pur­sue even bet­ter work­ing meth­ods by embrac­ing the use of advanced dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in the pro­duc­tion field.”