ISEA is concerned with the automated data evaluation and validation of integrated sensor technology with regard to the cell quality achieved with it.

The manufacturing process of the lithium-ion battery cells has been analysed up to now with limitations in achievable efficiency and inadequately known effects on cell quality parameters. These critical factors have a significant impact on production process costs. Another critical factor that increases the cost is the high energy and resource requirements of process steps. Considering all these parameters in the battery cell production process, it should be aimed to optimise the processes, minimise the processing time and subsequently reduce the scraps.

In the Optimised Cell Finalisation through Innovative Plant Technology and Parameter-Based Evaluation of Process and Quality Parameters in the Virtual Production System (OptiPro) project, the entire chain of finalisation of the lithium-ion battery cell will be digitalised according to the latest technology. All process steps and parameters in battery cell manufacturing will be explored and associated with a virtual manufacturing system. The data will be mapped with the virtual production system, and the mapped data will be analysed and evaluated with artificial intelligence (AI). All cell finalisation system technologies will communicate between the real and virtual production systems to provide a permanent feedback loop. Combining real and virtual production systems is expected to increase efficiency in the production process.

The primary goals of the project are to reduce the use of resources in battery cell production, the processing time and thus the costs of the production process. The use of innovative measurement technology in the project aims to enable a parameter-based evaluation of the process and the quality parameters associated with the following process step. The virtual production system to be developed for this purpose will consist of models that include inline measurements and end-of-line test results. This inline measurement technology tracks the individual process steps of battery cell finalisation online. In addition, it enables active intervention in the production process. In this way, potentially defective products can be detected and removed from the production process at an early stage, and the quality of the battery cells can be increased. After investigating the influence of the measurement and control parameters as well as the quality of the process steps on the production process, their connection with battery cell finalisation will be examined. On the other hand, the processing time will be reduced with the optimisation models in the virtual production system.