How Audi checks 1.5 million spot welds a shift with AI
Ultrasound spot checks gave way to AI that reviews every weld, so people look only at anomalies. A second system finds weld spatter with eight cameras.
Audi’s Neckarsulm plant is one of the clearest German examples of AI in quality control that has moved past the pilot stage.
Every weld, every shift
Audi uses AI to analyse around 1.5 million spot welds on 300 vehicles each shift in Neckarsulm (Audi). Before, staff used ultrasound to check welds on a random-sample basis, about 5,000 spot welds per vehicle. Now employees focus on the anomalies the AI flags.
When Audi began the roll-out in June 2023, it said the technical infrastructure would follow at Audi Brussels, Audi’s Ingolstadt headquarters and the Volkswagen plant in Emden, with the model retrained for each site’s weld settings. Audi also wrote an AI guide for production with Fraunhofer IAO and IPA, and worked with the DGQ quality association on an audit-proof process.
Eight cameras for weld spatter
A second system tackles weld spatter, the molten droplets that can damage wiring or hurt workers. According to Siemens, eight cameras photograph the underside of each car body after welding. Audi’s own AI model, running on Siemens Industrial Edge, finds spatter in near real time, and blue lights mark it on the underbody for operators to remove (Siemens).
“In the future, we will have many AI solutions on our shop floor, for example for predictive maintenance.”Mathias Mayer, Innovation Manager, Audi AG
On the floor
The lesson is the hand-off. In both systems, AI narrows the search and a person makes the call. That design is easier to certify, easier to explain to a works council, and easier to roll out to the next plant.
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