This interview was made possible thanks to the collaboration between RICAIP Testbed Prague at CIIRC and Continental, a technological leader in the automotive industry. Among other things, it introduces the RAASCEMAN project, in which several of our teams, particularly from DFKI and CIIRC, are actively involved.
The Continental Automotive plant in Brandýs shone in this year’s Global Lighthouse Network. The plant was awarded for its speed in implementing Industry 4.0 technologies. How did they manage to achieve this? In the latest episode of the Forbes BrandVoice podcast, Jakub Hamerník from Continental Automotive and Pavel Burget from the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at CTU discussed this success.
It’s not just about speed. Industrial companies are primarily focused on manufacturing efficiently and responding flexibly in real time to customer demands. At the heart of these efforts is the vision of smart factories, where people play the role of specialists. “Large companies have been aware of this for some time, but even small and medium-sized enterprises are beginning to realize they need to rethink how they manufacture, how they utilize human potential, and they are looking for new technologies that could be beneficial to their production,” says Pavel Burget, head of the Testbed for Industry 4.0 at CIIRC CTU.
Thanks to its partnership with CTU, Continental’s Brandýs factory succeeded in the international competition of the Global Lighthouse Network, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. The manufacturer of displays for modern automotive cockpits has thus joined the ranks of the most advanced companies in the world. “The competition was immense—800 plants entered the first round, and in the end, only 17, including us, were awarded. It’s a significant success for us; we’re the first plant within the global Continental network to achieve this,” said Jakub Hamerník, Smart Manufacturing Manager at Continental Automotive, in an interview.
The factory addresses its digital transformation and manufacturing through several projects, including RAASCEMAN, which develops software tools that enable companies to quickly and efficiently respond to unexpected disruptions. This project was supported by the European Commission with €4.6 million.
What can such recognition bring to the Czech economy? What does full automation mean, and what role will humans play in it? Is it time to start thinking about the fifth industrial revolution? These were the topics discussed by Pavel Burget and Jakub Hamerník, and you can listen to their conversation in the audio below.