TRATON's VWCO builds Meteor trucks on a new Industry 4.0 line in Resende, Brazil
VWCO is assembling its Meteor heavy truck in a new Industry 4.0 hall in Resende, Brazil, where bolts are tightened and logged electronically and self-driving tractors replace the line.
- 3 to 125 tons of permissible total weight
- 25 years
- End of December 2020
- 2,000 kilometers
What Happened
The TRATON brand Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus (VWCO) is building the Meteor truck series in a completely new digital manufacturing facility at its plant in Resende, Brazil, where buses and trucks have been rolling off the line for 25 years. The assembly line was developed according to the Industry 4.0 principle and enables a more customized approach to vehicle manufacturing than ever before. From the outside it looks like a standard addition to the existing plant, but inside the new production hall it is a new generation of data-driven smart manufacturing — most obviously because the assembly line for the cab of the super heavy-duty Meteor is much quieter than the neighbouring one. VWCO moved away completely from pneumatically powered tools, so the gentle humming of electric machines replaces the typical hissing of compressed air. VWCO offers a vehicle range of three to 125 tons of permissible total weight in Brazil, and the customized Meteor must satisfy widely different demands, such as carrying two trailers of sugarcane or hauling soy over a 2,000-kilometer route to the Atlantic Ocean ports.
- Electronically controlled, with the precise torque calibrated and logged; pneumatically powered tools were dropped entirely
- A fully automatic self-driving flat tractor guided by a signal busbar in the floor, instead of an assembly line
- Change the program and make small investments, instead of heavy retooling and installing new equipment
“Years after production, we can still establish the torque used when a part was bolted in. This is important for tracing and eliminating errors later on.”
- All components are electronically bolted together, replacing pneumatically powered tools.
- The electronically controlled process calibrates and logs the exact torque used to tighten each bolt.
- Work steps and production analytics are processed and saved in the data center of the VWCO truck manufacturing factory, acting as a kind of memory for manufacturing.
- Cab parts move from one workstation to the next on a self-driving transport vehicle — a flat tractor guided by a signal busbar in the floor and controlled fully automatically — rather than on an assembly line.
- The digital tractor works with three new lines, for the driver cab, the engine and the chassis.
- New components or production steps can be integrated into manufacturing faster than in traditional line production.
VWCO establishes the Consórcio Modular factory model in Resende, with key suppliers independently responsible for their own stages of production.
The Resende factory is closed entirely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The restructuring and the ramp-up phase of Meteor super heavy-duty truck assembly have to be finished, ahead of the January start of the Brazilian soy and sugar harvest.
“For instance, the factory in Resende was even closed entirely in April 2020. But we still managed to finish restructuring the factory on time. One reason is that everyone involved pitched in — from the assembly line workers to the engineering staff to the production planners and logistics specialists. Another reason is the traditionally close collaboration with our suppliers.”
One important field of application for the Meteor series is the Brazilian soy and sugar harvest, for which farmers and freight forwarders usually order new trucks — the harvest always begins in January in Brazil, a particular challenge for VWCO's production planners. Dezoto credits the Consórcio Modular, the special Resende factory model established 25 years ago in which the most important suppliers are independently responsible for their own production stages: it is not VWCO employees but the respective supplier's employees who install the cab or the engine, while VWCO develops products with each partner and organizes the installation of their parts. That modular, parallel approach let modules such as the drive system, transmission system, chassis and cab be prepared independently of each other, and recording production analytics according to Industry 4.0 principles let VWCO simulate and merge manufacturing processes precisely before the start of production. Combined with completely digitalized production, the modular assembly enables customized manufacturing of the Meteor directly in the new line, with a wider range of components adapted continually to market demand and customized extras integrated right up to the last minute. "When a customer in Northeast Brazil orders a Meteor, it is almost as if they are operating the assembly computer located thousands of kilometers away here in Resende," Dezoto says, while marketing analyst Simone Santana adds that VWCO surveyed numerous users and is now integrating the wishes of freight forwarders and drivers into production — offering long-haul drivers an extra-wide bed or a cooler that moves at the touch of a button, features she describes as standard rather than extras.
Previously from TRATON Group
TRATON has been publicly reworking how it deals with suppliers: after the Strait of Hormuz blockade cut oil supplies, the group laid out a supply-chain resilience strategy built on dual sourcing, decoupling and real-time tracking to keep truck production moving through crises. Today's Resende story is a plant-level view of a different supplier relationship model, where partners work inside the factory.
Background drawn from MotorClaw's earlier coverage of TRATON Group's official releases.
Why this matters
The hall shows how truck manufacturing is moving from fixed assembly lines to data-logged, flexible production that can absorb custom orders right up to the last minute. That matters to Brazilian fleet buyers in the soy and sugar harvest, who order widely different trucks, and to the suppliers who build parts inside the Resende plant.
Terms in This Story
- Industry 4.0
- The use of connected digital technologies — sensors, data networks and analytics — to control and monitor manufacturing.
- Consórcio Modular
- VWCO's factory model in Resende in which key suppliers work inside the plant and are independently responsible for their own stages of production.
- Torque
- The turning force applied when tightening a bolt or nut.
- Permissible total weight
- The maximum allowed weight of a vehicle including its cargo, used here as the measure of a vehicle range.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.