First Solar Rapid Prototype & Virtual Commissioning

CLIENT CHALLENGE

First Solar is one of the largest solar manufacturers in the world and the largest
one with manufacturing in the US.

When the company began planning a new $680M plant in Ohio, they utilized Automation Intelligence to test their factory layout concept and validate their controls for over 100 PLCs and 85 robots prior to startup.

AUTOINTEL SOLUTIONS

Full Facility Simulation

A simulated model identified bottlenecks and found opportunities to right size the machine capacity, including accumulators, and routing logic to navigate panels among several process steps. In all, we identified over 160 improvements to the system design and routing logic which improved OEE by 15%.

Virtual Commissioning

By utilizing virtual commissioning to test the PLC logic and robot systems, we reduced
on-site commissioning time by 25%+ versus previous sites.