Open Access

Edgardo Salvador Oviedo

• The Industrie 4.0 continuously allocates new trends that evolve and integrate as part of the digitized German industry, particularly in the automotive sector. OEMs and their suppliers are in the process of adopting and implementing such technologies and trends in their production processes around the globe. Companies expect positive outcomes such as increased efficiency in their processes and a faster and higher return on investment, through the implementation of digital factories. In this context the Mexican automotive manufacturing suppliers' sector is expected to grow in the upcoming years, due to the ongoing ratification and implementation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which in the automotive industry requires an increase on locally produced content from 62.5% to 75% by the year of 2023, and also establishes that 40% of auto-parts are required to be produced in an area, where an average labor wage is 16 USD/hour, thus triggering the potential beginning of a high automated Mexican automotive industry. The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the main trends and technologies that characterize the Industrie 4.0, describing their application in leading German digital factories, with the purpose of defining which ones are eligible to be implemented in the Mexican automotive supplier's new processes from the start of the factory planning process. Factors as the cost of investment, time of deployment and efficiency will play a principal role in the definition of criteria for the technologies' description. Identifying and classifying the characteristics in a qualitative and quantitative manner, will allow the validation for the execution of such concepts and technologies in the Mexican industrial context. The economical, educational, cultural and political differences between Germany and Mexico, are factors to take into consideration as well. The final objective is to provide a roadmap with settled priorities based on cost, characteristics and defined parameters of new technologies, to serve as a guide not only in the planning step of setting up new production processes on existing sites, or complete new manufacturing locations, but also to prioritize the allocation of resources, that the Mexican government and the C-suite of automotive supplier's industry could potentially execute for the research and development of new technology in the near future. Furthermore, the outcomes of this master thesis will be developed as an E-Learning unit, to allow other users to continue incorporating information as Industrie 4.0 evolve.