The design and optimization of battery cell production require advanced manufacturing technology with knowledge-based parameter design. The variety of battery cell formats and configurations requires greater flexibility in production. Cell finishing, as the final stage of battery cell production, faces the challenge of adapting to both mechanical design and internal cell characteristics, while reducing production costs by improving process time, cell quality, and production safety. Production technology serves as an important building block for production optimization, and related technological innovations can contribute to overall improvements in time, quality, and cost along the cell finishing process chain.
To evaluate the technology in the overall cell finishing concept, this work uses a systematically developed database that can be visualized in an innovation map. Two established methods are applied for the assessment of technological innovation: morphological boxes to select the technology along the cell finishing process chain; and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to evaluate the selected technology. As part of the QFD, evaluation criteria are defined according to manufacturing requirements including Capital Expenditures (CapEx), Operational Expenditures (OpEx), and safety risks. In order to obtain an overview of trend-setting results, the evaluation procedure is designed to automatically deliver output using the “Visual Basic for Applications” program to enhance user accessibility compared to previous models in MATLAB.
This approach enables visualization of current potentials in cell finishing and highlights four groups of technological innovation that contribute to cell finishing optimization and adaptation to cell design variations. With a customizable QFD design via “Visual Basic for Applications”, it creates more transparency for cell finishing plant development to assess technology available for each process step. For future research, this approach could also be embedded into the process of plant development to achieve innovative configuration concepts.