ManufacturingRobotics & Physical AIDigital Twins & SimulationMachine Learning
Schaeffler Group: Transforming Production With Digital Twins and Physical AI
Schaeffler Group
Schaeffler Group built a digital twin platform using NVIDIA Omniverse and OpenUSD to plan, simulate and optimize plants, machines and workflows across its global manufacturing operations, in collaboration with NVIDIA and robotics partner Wandelbots. The platform reduced commissioning times through virtual commissioning and facility layout planning, and cut robotic task development time from hundreds of hours to half a day using AI-driven simulation and training. At its Germany inverter assembly line, Schaeffler achieved reliable robotics performance after 24 hours of training and, with Wandelbots' virtual controller and reinforcement learning, refined robotic movements to within 5-6 centimeters for gearbox assembly tasks. Pilot projects are underway in China and Germany, including e-motor assembly and Vehicle Lifetime Solutions warehouses, with plans to integrate digital twins into more than half of Schaeffler's 100+ global manufacturing sites by 2030.
