ams OSRAM / Site Schwabmünchen

For 90 percent of OSRAM products, the ams OSRAM site in Schwabmünchen supplies pre-manufactured components. These include tungsten wires for vehicle headlamp lighting and chemical raw materials for LED products. The plant, which has been in operation since 1961, has been intensively using IoT and digitalization technologies for about 20 years.

The impetus for the project, which was awarded the INDUSTRIE 4.0 AWARD, came from a “Zero-Incident” requirement set by a customer in 2018 for the approximately 260 million lamps delivered annually. Traditional methods such as Six Sigma were not sufficient to manage the extraordinarily high complexity of the production process: 60 process steps are carried out at the plant, followed by another 60 at two other company locations. Unlike the classic “Single Product” approach, a single error in this process cannot simply be eliminated.

The award-winning, in-house Industry 4.0 solution makes even the smallest anomalies visible and solvable. The Zero-Incident goal was achieved in 2020 and has been maintained ever since. Today, a “Production System 4.0” combines Lean Management and digitalization, with the solution being characterized particularly by the following elements:

• Networking of all machines and systems through sensors, IIoT tools, and AI; integration, combination, and visualization of all relevant product and process information in a Digital Twin.
• Pragmatic approach: among other things, machine data acquisition (MDE) via e-labels enables the connection of non-networked systems to the plant’s runtime monitoring.
• Circulating information flow: from the shop floor to department managers, site managers, and corporate management, and vice versa.
• Demand-oriented qualification programs: ensuring results, continuous development of the solution, and ongoing improvement throughout the entire manufacturing process.

For each of the 120 process steps involved, suitable technologies and systems were implemented to identify the raw material, assign orders and tools, and re-label the product after processing.
The award-winning plant has developed its own traceability system for tungsten products. This system records 60 process steps with 34 read and write operations along the value stream, from powder processing and rod production to coarse and fine wire manufacturing. The produced parts receive a unique product ID, which must be repeatedly applied.

Approx. 1,000 data sets from heterogeneous process steps are collected, including chemical reduction, metallophysical sintering, and mechanical forming processes. This creates a precise mapping of all process steps, incorporating both process and quality data. Additionally, the INDUSTRIE 4.0 AWARD winner ensures results with self-developed AI algorithms. The focus is on process optimization, employee support, and production control.

In a collaborative learning process, both employees and algorithms “train” using experience-based insights and data from shop floor management, continuously evolving and improving together.