BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA) has become the first automobile manufacturer to enable full 5G wireless coverage at all its plants. The new wireless standard allows large quantities of data to be transferred within a very short space of time, since data will now be processed in small, high-performance computer centres directly on site and no longer has to travel long distances. This means that networked machines and systems can exchange data in real time, for instance, and align themselves even better with the production process. 5G provides the ideal conditions for numerous digital innovations and has the potential to further increase efficiency, quality and flexibility in production.
BBA is also implementing the technology in a pilot project that uses 5G to transfer large quantities of test data from vehicles to the data centre in real time, making data collection and analysis more efficient. In this way, vehicle updates involving large volumes of data and real-time diagnostics could also be conducted remotely in the future.
With this development, BBA becomes the first automobile manufacturer to use 5G technology in automotive development and production. The BBA Brilliance Automotive joint venture was founded in 2003. Over the past 16 years, it has become one of the most successful premium automobile manufacturers in China, encompassing production and sales of BMW automobiles in China, as well as local development tasks. In 2018, the BBA automotive plants in Tiexi and Dadong produced over 490,000 vehicles for the Chinese market – an increase of almost 24% year-on-year. BBA employs a total of more than 18,000 people
