Month: April 2019

AR and VR are buzz words that have been trending around many industries including manufacturing for a while now. With so many companies claiming to provide AR/VR solutions for all types of different needs, this blog addresses how these technologies impact manufacturing and what you need to consider when adopting them.

What is AR? What is VR? Let’s get definitions of these solutions out of the way first.  Both are related to two largely synonymous terms–mixed reality and computer-mediated reality. Wikipedia defines augmented reality (AR) as a direct or indirect live view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information, ideally across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment) or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment) and is spatial registered with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. This is not to be confused with virtual reality (VR) where an interactive computer-generated experience taking place within a simulated environment. AR alters one’s current perception of a real-world environment, whereas VR replaces the real-world environment with a simulated one. The following picture depicts this very nicely:

How does ARVR impact manufacturing industry? Here are a few benefits when deployed correctly:

• Reduction in Assembly Errors: This is crucial in complex, highly regulated manufacturing and sustainment environments such as aerospace and defense industries whereas a single error could cost millions of dollars.
• Reduction in Assembly Time: Higher productivity equates into enhanced cost savings.
• Reduction in Training Requirements and Time: Standardization of intuitive, readily reusable training content.
• Increase Work Instructions Recall: Fast references to relevant and current work instructions.
• Transfer of “Tribal Knowledge”: Expert knowledge can be captured, shared at the time work is performed as well as in the future to enhance on-boarding of new employees.

All these points translate into cost savings, increased quality, and higher customer satisfaction.

Modern, complex manufacturing involves assembling hundreds or thousands of components in a precise sequence as quickly and efficiently as possible. Even though we’ve come a long-way from the days of paper-based work instructions, thanks to MES solutions like iBase-t’s Solumina, current work instructions are now being served up via stationary displays (e.g., laptop or workstation PC). Augmented reality applications serve up work instructions in a technicians’ field of view, via VR goggles, so they no longer need to travel back and forth between tasks to review documentation or enter data. This keeps your most valuable resources focused, productive, and doing what they do best.

Additional benefits of AR in manufacturing is support of field personnel. In many situations field services technicians may require expert support when servicing equipment from long distance. AR minimizes the need for experts to travel to customer worksites by providing a real-time, “see what I see” kind of telepresence experience. This allows experts to see work being performed through the eyes of a technicians as they are performing maintenance tasks from anywhere.

In addition to time and cost savings, AR related technologies can also have a positive impact on quality assurance. Not only can these technologies deliver relevant multi-media information to QA engineers on the floor, it can also be used to record problems on the spot as they arise. We often hear from our customers that documenting nonconformance issues can be challenging and difficult. Accurately describing issues in writing is time consuming and burdensome on staff. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, quality staff can capture video on the spot and attach it against any product discrepancies. Sort of a show and tell, with a focus on the “show.”

We are certain that AR, possibly VR as well, technology can transform the user experience for complex, discrete manufacturing organizations. One of the most important things to consider when adopting AR/VR solutions for your workforce is to clearly identify your goals. Simply adopting technology for technology sake is not a goal. Benefits such as enhancing user experiences, cost savings, better resource utilization and customer experience, etc. all need to be weighted before you adopt these technologies. The possibilities are waiting for you.

Many new technologies are being introduced these days into manufacturing operations, yet MES—which has been around for decades—is viewed as a foundational enabler of digital transformation. Technologies like augmented reality, artificial intelligence, cloud and edge computing, mobile, and auto-ID are being integrated into MES solutions. Likewise, smart machines, sensors, and IIoT platforms are expanding capabilities to integrate to enterprise systems like MES.

Regardless of rumors about the potential demise of MES solutions, the facts are that many of the functions and features provided by MES cannot be replaced by new IIoT platforms, even with analytics and apps. Alone, IIoT devices and platforms do not offer many new possibilities to manufacturers because they cannot provide operational context for data, cannot trigger actions in response to data, and are not designed to orchestrate processes across the factory and value chain. Many production processes need the human in the loop and MES provides that platform.

MES does not deliver Digital Manufacturing by itself. It needs to be integrated into the organization’s digital platform and “system of systems” including engineering, business, and automation systems. MES does provide these important features required to integrate Operations into the Digital Transformation strategy:

• Intelligent Insights. Raw data captured from machines and workers during production must be turned into information by adding context and organization. Context includes data about the product specifications, process step, people, and equipment involved in the activity when the datum—like a dimensional measurement or environmental condition—is captured.

Organization of stored data is also important to enable views that joins data from multiple activities for correlation and root-cause analysis. The organization of data makes it easier to aggregate data into significant metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). It helps put the human in the loop to make better decisions quickly.

• Data Stewardship and Governance. A proliferation of custom apps in production can lead to a multitude of data silos that are not coordinated to facilitate integration and aggregation. The MES database provides de-facto governance, through its production-centric data model and integration interfaces, maintaining data clean, normalized, and organized to facilitate joins and searches across data in the enterprise.

• Standardization and Control. The MES manages and enforces every aspect of the work steps including equipment, materials, and data collection for automated and manual processes. MES enforces the policies and rules to make sure people and equipment are operating as they’re supposed to. The standardization makes production processes repeatable with consistent performance and quality.

• Responsive Action. MES functions include methods to handle exception-driven events during the production process. Events or incidents like a suspect defect or process anomaly. MES is the natural system to receive these types of notifications and alerts from an IIoT analytical platform. In MES, these triggers can initiate procedures to record a discrepancy, change the equipment settings or operator instructions based on an automatically detected condition.

• Connection and Digital Thread. MES provides an integration bridge between the plant and key enterprise systems including engineering’s PLM system, and procurement, inventory and cost management’s ERP system. This integration can be orchestrated to provide a digital thread linking the product’s engineering design specification to the product’s realization process, and even the product’s sustainment services in a way that facilitates the maintenance of a digital twin for each physical product unit.

The digital thread and digital twin can provide many benefits including better data exchange across the enterprise, and capability to analyze the product design against actual performance for continuous improvement. The digital thread accelerates the introduction of new products and variations by making it easier to implement design changes into downstream production definition elements like inspection requirements, machining programs, and work instructions.

The need for more real-time factory data and enterprise-wide connectivity is refueling the interest in MES. IIoT technologies are a great addition to the manufacturing IT landscape however, for the reasons listed above, MES is needed more than ever as a foundational piece to the Digital Manufacturing strategy.