Creative & Innovative Systems (CIS), the Korean specialist in battery production plants, has equipped its latest electrode production machine with components from Siemens. The machine is for a new European gigafactory, which the company will deliver at the end of 2020. The global player from Daegu isn’t just benefiting from Siemens’ first-class contacts in the European automotive industry; it’s also enjoying tangible advantages in terms of process quality and engineering efficiency.
Although battery cell production is similar to the winding processes in the converting industry, which is already supported by Siemens, our company had previously found it very difficult to enter this growing market. This has now changed: CIS, one of the world’s most important OEMs of electrode production machines, has decided to equip a complete set of machines for an emerging European gigafactory with components from Siemens. And the numbers are impressive: about 300 axes driven by Simotics motors, and Sinamics S120 and G120 frequency converters controlled by Simatic S7-1500 fail-safe CPUs and TIA Portal engineered with the support of a number of industrial technical standards like OPC UA and Pack ML.
Thanks to the extremely comprehensive Siemens product portfolio, CIS also opted for HMI solutions from Siemens
From CIS’ point of view, the reason for the collaboration with Siemens was initially of a more strategic nature: The goal was on the one hand to utilize Siemens’ decades of experience with European standards and procedures, and on the other hand to take advantage of Siemens’ traditionally solid relationship with the European automotive industry in order to enter the emerging European market for e-mobility. But as the project progressed, the Korean specialists recognized the advantages of the highly integrated Siemens product portfolio, including TIA Portal.
Standardization and digitalization are key
Thanks to the high degree of standardization across all components and the consistent digitalization of the engineering processes, the CIS specialists were able to benefit from an unexpectedly high efficiency gain in the first of the five sub-projects. Hur, Sang-gu, head of Design at CIS, puts it this way:
“With the TIA Portal approach we’ve been able to shorten setup time by up to 20 percent and achieve greater flexibility and productivity.“
The European battery requires global technology standards, certificates, and strong customer support networks as well as the best technical expertise, which is why we chose Siemens as our partner. Kim, SuHa, CEO, CIS
The first and probably not the last project
Because the Korean specialists assume that engineering efficiency will increase even more as the pilot project advances, it’s not surprising that CIS assumes that the first gigafactory project in Europe won’t be the last for CIS and Siemens. Kim, SuHa, CEO of CIS, explains:
“Siemens is the best partner for the best-in-class electrode machine technology in this eco-friendly battery market.”
And since the market for battery cell production equipment in Europe will grow by 30-40 percent annually until 2030, according to VDMA estimates, we can assume that this is the beginning of a long and successful partnership.
For more just follow the links or start a discussion below.
English reference page: https://references.siemens.com/reference/?id=/data/Record-21657.xml
German reference page: https://de.references.siemens.com/reference/?id=/data/Record-15142.xml
Battery website: http://siemens.com/battery
Converting website: https://siemens.com/converting
