Introduction
With the continuous advancement of the industrial Internet and smart manufacturing, an increasing number of manufacturing enterprises are embracing digital transformation. Brilliance BMW Motor Co., Ltd., a benchmark enterprise jointly established by BMW Group and Brilliance Group, holds a pivotal position in the global automotive manufacturing arena. To better achieve intelligent factory upgrades and improve production efficiency, Brilliance BMW took the lead at its Shenyang production base by introducing the EMQX messaging platform, and by leveraging cloud data services, built a real-time data transmission architecture spanning production workshops, factory areas, and cloud platforms.
Business Challenge
AGV Communication and Telemetry Monitoring
In modern factories, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) have become an essential component of intelligent logistics. Brilliance BMW has introduced AGVs on its production floor to replace traditional manual forklifts, achieving automated material transport from warehouses to production lines. To ensure real-time communication between the AGVs and the central control system, the factory adopted the MQTT transmission standard based on the VDA 5050 robot protocol. The messaging platform was required to have the following characteristics:
- Low Latency: The production environment demands extremely low latency for real-time data exchange, as communication delays directly affect scheduling responses and safety monitoring.
- High Throughput: Numerous devices operate concurrently on the shop floor, with each AGV needing to report its status, tasks, and operational trajectories in real time. Traditional communication methods struggle to meet the high-concurrency data transmission demands.
- Stability and Reliability: For factory-level applications, the reliability of data transmission is critical; any data loss or delay could impact production scheduling and safety monitoring.
Digital Factory Construction
Beyond AGV communication, Brilliance BMW aimed to connect various production equipment data within the factory to the cloud, achieving seamless data connectivity between production workshops, factory areas, and cloud platforms. The main challenges included:
- Diverse Equipment and Data Integration: The production line involves a wide variety of equipment with differing data formats and protocols, making unified data access, management, and analysis a significant challenge.
- Local and Cloud Collaborative Processing: To meet on-site real-time monitoring requirements while harnessing the powerful data processing capabilities of the cloud, a stable MQTT messaging chain was needed to efficiently bridge local data collection and cloud data processing.
- System Security and Reliability: During the transmission of data spanning production workshops, factory areas, and cloud platforms, ensuring data security, stable communication, and rapid fault recovery is a key element of the enterprise’s digital transformation.
Solution
To address these challenges, Brilliance BMW selected EMQX as the core engine of its industrial Internet messaging platform, integrating it with Azure cloud services to build an overall solution that is manifested in the following aspects:
High-Performance Messaging Platform
EMQX, as an enterprise-grade MQTT server, boasts extremely high concurrent processing capabilities and stability. It can be deployed locally to meet low-latency demands, while also seamlessly interfacing with cloud clusters deployed on Azure VMs to achieve high-speed data forwarding and processing. With EMQX, Brilliance BMW successfully implemented real-time data collection and unified management of various equipment on the production line, ensuring timely information transmission across all on-site segments.
Local Deployment and Cloud Integration
At the factory site, EMQX is deployed on local servers, directly interfacing with data endpoints such as AGVs and production line equipment, ensuring low latency and high stability during data transmission. Simultaneously, key data is uploaded to the Azure cloud in real time. By leveraging services such as Azure Load Balancer, Event Hubs, and databases, the system achieves comprehensive data integration and in-depth analysis. This hybrid deployment architecture not only enhances system fault tolerance but also provides robust data support for subsequent predictive maintenance and production scheduling.
Secure and Reliable Data Architecture
Addressing the high-security requirements of industrial environments, the solution is designed with a multi-layered secure communication architecture that spans production workshops, factory areas, and cloud platforms. The security authentication, access control, and message encryption mechanisms provided by EMQX ensure the integrity and confidentiality of device data during transmission, thereby mitigating potential network attacks and data leakage risks.
Result
The messaging platform built on EMQX and Azure cloud services has delivered multiple significant advantages to Brilliance BMW:
- Enhanced Communication Performance The locally deployed EMQX messaging platform significantly reduces data transmission latency, with system response times approximately 20 times faster than traditional solutions, ensuring efficient real-time on-site monitoring and scheduling.
- Reduced Development and Integration Costs By unifying data access and the messaging chain, the complexity of multi-protocol and multi-system integration is reduced by approximately 80%, substantially shortening development cycles and lowering system maintenance costs.
- End-to-End Data Security Assurance From production equipment to the cloud data center, the entire data transmission chain is protected by stringent security measures, constructing a robust security barrier for the smart manufacturing system and ensuring stable and reliable data transmission.
- Intelligent Operation and Predictive Maintenance Utilizing real-time data collection and analysis, the factory not only achieves precise monitoring of AGVs and key equipment statuses but also leverages data trend analysis to proactively identify equipment anomalies. This promotes the implementation of predictive maintenance, thereby enhancing equipment utilization and production efficiency.
Conclusion
As a significant player in the global automotive manufacturing arena, Brilliance BMW has laid a solid foundation for smart manufacturing and digital transformation by introducing EMQX and Azure cloud services to achieve efficient data interconnection among production workshops, factory areas, and the cloud platform. This solution not only achieves low latency, high throughput, and end-to-end secure transmission from a technical standpoint, but also brings significant operational benefits by dramatically reducing development and maintenance costs. In the future, as industrial Internet technologies continue to mature and application scenarios expand, similar smart manufacturing solutions will undoubtedly offer valuable experiences and successful models for more enterprises in their upgrade and transformation journeys.