As the world moves towards more sustainable energy solutions, the demand for batteries has skyrocketed. However, producing batteries is a cost-intensive endeavour, and meeting—or even cutting—the time-to-market plans is crucial for upcoming battery manufacturers.
Challenges in Battery Manufacturing: Time-to-Market and Cost
Battery manufacturing requires scarce and therefore costly resources and raw materials, such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. This makes product development and testing very expensive, especially when there is no financial revenue coming from these activities.
However, it is essential to continue investing in product development and testing, as the production process is so complex that reducing these activities might have an unfavourable after-effect on final products and, as a result, customer relationships.
Therefore, battery manufacturers must focus on making the product development process as efficient as possible. One way to achieve this is by adopting dedicated battery manufacturing software solutions that make product development and testing more efficient, streamline the manufacturing process, and reduce the time-to-market to give companies a competitive edge.
Leveraging Digitalisation in Battery Manufacturing
Fortunately, digitalisation is an area where new players can gain a significant advantage—and it’s an area where Elisa IndustrIQ has deep expertise. Companies that have already applied digital tools to their production processes know the resulting benefits: reduced costs and greater efficiency without compromising product quality. New entrants should partner with experts who understand both the technical and operational perspectives of introducing digital solutions.
The Importance of Efficient Product Development for Battery Manufacturers
The battery market evolves rapidly, requiring manufacturers to keep pace with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive. This demands an efficient product development process that can quickly transform innovative ideas into commercial products while ensuring the highest standards of quality and safety. Delivering high-quality batteries quickly and efficiently is critical to success in this fast-paced and competitive market.
Xperidesk: Improving Information Management in Development Labs
To support efficient development, Elisa IndustrIQ created Xperidesk—a powerful data management and analysis platform for manufacturing engineering teams. Xperidesk centralises documentation of experiments, recipes, and measurement data, enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organisation. Its advanced analytics and visualisation tools uncover patterns and trends, helping teams make informed, data-driven decisions throughout the development journey.
Capturing and Sharing Data in a Structured, Centralised Way
Unlike scattered spreadsheets, Xperidesk provides a standardised framework for data collection and documentation. This ensures data is easily leveraged by users and other systems, building a powerful knowledge base that accelerates learning, scales expertise, and enhances regulatory compliance through secure, traceable data management.
Streamlining Product Development to Reduce Time-to-Market
Xperidesk enables teams to build thorough process understanding by capturing detailed engineering knowledge. This foundation supports virtual prototyping—using digital simulations to test and verify process changes before physical trials. Virtual prototyping uncovers potential issues early, reduces costly errors and rework, and optimises processes for maximum efficiency, quality, and yield.
Design of Experiments: A Powerful Approach with Cornerstone
Cornerstone is an advanced tool for modelling and optimising battery manufacturing processes via Design of Experiments (DOE). It lets engineering teams define process variables and explore their interactions systematically, building mathematical models to identify optimal settings for efficiency and quality. Cornerstone’s statistical toolkit—covering factorial designs, response surface methodology, ANOVA, and SPC—enables deep insights without requiring expert statisticians.
Using Cornerstone to Optimise Processes: A Data-Driven Approach
Cornerstone’s data-driven optimisation reduces the number of physical experiments needed, speeding up development and cutting costs. Its visual analytics highlight key variables and relationships, enabling quick root-cause analysis and continuous refinement of process parameters for higher yields and lower waste.
Virtual Prototyping: Identifying Optimal Parameters Before Production
By simulating process variations digitally, Cornerstone allows engineers to test settings in a virtual environment, avoiding lengthy and expensive physical trials. This accelerates time-to-market and minimises risk, ensuring that production begins with validated, high-efficiency parameters.
Learn to Cut Corners Digitally
With sufficient data, Xperidesk and Cornerstone enable “digital corner-cutting”—strategically reducing unnecessary tests while maintaining product integrity. This approach accelerates development far beyond traditional methods, helping battery manufacturers bring innovative, sustainable solutions to market faster and more resourcefully.
