Designing a New Battery Gigafactory at ACC

Client
Automotive Cells Company (ACC)
Expertises
Overall Engineering Expertise, Simulation
Business goals
Minimize investment and operational costs, Shorten lead time, Optimize inventory levels, De-risk capital expenditures
Achieved results
Context

Need to Optimize the Capital Expenditure Related to the Design of a Gigafactory

ACC is a newly founded company with shares held by Stellantis, Total, and Mercedes. The engineering is in charge of the design of a new Gigafactory in Billy – Berclau (France). Such a factory is expected to cost roughly €1 bn, which means that overinvestment in the average common in the industry (10%) would lead to tens of millions of euros in wasted assets. Hence the need to optimize the design of the factory. The client reached out to Dillygence, first to conduct a functional analysis of the factory and then to validate the complete structure of the factory (e.g., inventories, control policy, lead time, production flow)

Our Solutions

Our Expertise in Manufacturing System Engineering in Display

We conducted two basic activities to improve the flows of the battery Gigafactory:

  • Functional General Analysis of the Gigafactory: We used our expertise in engineering to conduct a functional analysis of the factory and then validate the complete design of the factory (e.g., inventories, control policy, lead time, production flow). This approach was rolled out to identify all functionalities and tools the factory would need to be equipped with to support the production teams in delivering their objectives (e.g., volume, SKUs, quality)
  • Validation and optimization of the simulation model: the simulation model was checked for consistency; its code was lightened for responsiveness. As a result, its runtime was divided by 15. Thanks to this simulation code optimization, the team was able to optimize the factory's whole model and define the system's optimal parameters.
Benefits

Factory Performance Drastically Improved, and the Overall Project De-risked

The benefits were twofold:

  • The improvement of the factory design: ACC and our experts proposed a drastic reduction of inventory, lead time reduction, and optimization of the production flow. Several other parameters of the factory were optimized, leading to cost reduction. Overall, we exceeded the targets set by the clients.
  • De-risking of the overall project: thanks to the functional analysis, the team identified a list of critical activities and tools that were missing in the manufacturing system engineering process, thereby posing real risks to the overall project implementation.
Designing a New Battery Gigafactory at ACC

Testimonials

What Our Clients Say

In the context of the transformation of the automotive sector and the transition to all-electric, Dillygence has accompanied us from the general functional analysis and today in the construction of our digital twin, essential to the launch and operation of our Gigafactory in Billy-Berclau. What was great about the work we did with Dillygence was the validation of our simulation model, the reduction of inventories - divided by two - the reduction of the lead time, and the improvement the whole Gigafactory flow.

Luc Macherel

Luc Macherel

Industrial-Support Pole Manager

Automotive Cells Company