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Leading the charge
Enabling ambitious battery production at scale .
By Puneet Sinha
The battery industry is forecast to grow tenfold by the end of the decade . This growth is driven by increasing demand for lithium-ion cell batteries , predominantly for electrified transportation and energy storage . The high market demand and increasingly supportive governmental policies from many countries make for fierce competition between start-ups , joint ventures , and incumbents to determine the market leaders . New entrants and established suppliers face many of the same challenges of how to shrink scale-up time , reduce scrap rates , and maximize throughput while still meeting cost , quality , and sustainability targets . Traditional manufacturing practices cannot deliver on these ambitions .
Rather , businesses seeking to scale up their battery production cost-effectively , and take a leading market position , need a digital enterprise framework for manufacturing where the digital twin of production is connected to real factory operations through automation technologies and industrial IoT ( IIoT ) enabled devices . This enables virtual design and optimization of production line and validation of production processes before implementation on the factory floor , thereby de-risking investment and shortening the time to scale . Connecting the digital framework with automation hardware and software , and Industrial IoT facilitates an end-to-end integration of production . This delivers executional insights to large scale production and a data-driven framework to continuously improve production throughput while balancing process sustainability and profitability in the long-term .
Scaling faster with virtual development
Examples from the last few years have shown that it can take seven years or more for companies to go from gigafactory announcements to achieving stable
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