Cost Modell for Agile Battery Cell Manufacturing

The industrial production of battery cells faces complex challenges due to the dynamic nature of market demands, evolving cell specifications, and the constant evolution of battery technologies. To navigate these challenges, agile production systems offer a great potential within the battery manufacturing landscape. This paper proposes a sophisticated cost modeling approach to facilitate the evaluation of agile manufacturing concepts in comparison to traditional large-scale production systems, as can be found in most giga-factories. By considering diverse factors such as equipment specifications, material flows, operating costs, and production throughput, the model offers a comprehensive analysis of the economic feasibility of different manufacturing setups. This approach is employed to assess three production scenarios: the lower limit scenario, the ramp-up scenario, and the format flexibility scenario, shedding light on the economic operating windows of agile production systems over conventional large-scale manufacturing setups. It is shown that the agile manufacturing system used for reference in this paper is capable of manufacturing cheaper cells up to a total volume of approximately 1.7 million cells, when compared to a conventional production setup. This is equivalent to an annual production capacity of 225 MWh. When manufacturing five different cell formats within a year, the break-even point between the agile and large-scale manufacturing is shifted to 2.7 Mio manufactured cells, which is equivalent to 355 MWh of yearly manufactured cell capacity.