Immersive Technology in Manufacturing

Although the whole industry is still trying to promote the development and adoption of fully automatic "lights out" manufacturing systems, a considerable part of manufacturing activities still require human skills and dexterity. The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in manufacturing can help humans perform these tasks accurately.

Immersive technology has gone beyond their origins, from novels to mainstream applications in the real world. The emergence and popularization of smart phones have accelerated the spread of these technologies among the public. While attracting the attention of the global public, they have also aroused the interest of enterprises, which make full use of people's obsession with immersive technology. This has led enterprises to develop immersive technologies in customer-centric applications. For example, the use of immersive technologies in digital marketing, namely virtual reality and augmented reality, has been increasingly adopted by large and small companies. But now, as the novelty begins to fade among consumers, enterprises begin to turn their attention to the interior and design applications of these technologies to improve their key business operations. The application of virtual reality, augmented reality and other technologies in the manufacturing industry is an example of the transformation of immersive technology from a consumer centered application to an employee and process centered application. Immersive technology has proved to be a natural choice for manufacturing processes because it can enhance users' visibility of the process and provide them with the right information at the right time, as demonstrated by the implementation of immersive technology by major manufacturers.

Demand for immersive technology in manufacturing industry

According to Yi or Manufacturing, since the introduction of automation and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), manufacturing processes have become less and less dependent on labor. More and more manufacturing plants are committed to the so-called "lights out" manufacturing in industry terminology, which is particularly applicable to the fields that require extremely high precision and have little demand for customization, change and inspection. The industries that are meaningful for lamp out manufacturing include material and chemical processing plants, oil refineries, food processing and packaging, and large-scale manufacturing plants for simple products.

However, most of the products produced today will change with the change of customer needs. As a result, manufacturing needs to be highly flexible, but equally intolerant of non conformity. Although these processes will eventually be automated through the use of general-purpose robots, for now, they will require the decision-making capabilities of dexterous human hands and brains. Unlike general-purpose robots with superhuman information processing capabilities, humans cannot process large amounts of information quickly, so they cannot make decisions based on all available information. They can't perceive or see hidden patterns like AI based systems. Therefore, human workers need to provide help when performing different tasks involved in the manufacturing process from the initial design to the final inspection.

Application of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Manufacturing

Although the adoption of virtual and augmented reality technology in the manufacturing industry is still in its infancy, facts have proved that it has become a major game changer for manufacturing participants. It helps to improve design and manufacturing process by improving worker productivity and plant utilization.

Interactive Design

Before the production of products, a lot of planning and design work is usually carried out. Functional product design is the essence of product quality and the key driving force of product value. Manufacturers attach great importance to the correctness of design. Traditionally, designers have been using two-dimensional CAD models to test and try products that are essentially three-dimensional. For products that must be tested in real time, designers usually use physical prototypes to test the product design. These prototypes are difficult to make, and more difficult to redesign for testing and retesting. In addition to being expensive, it also delays the time to market (TTM), because the physical prototype needs to redo the model many times, so each iteration requires time to physically recreate the prototype.

Through virtual reality, designers can conceive products in three-dimensional space and test these products in a simulated environment until the design is completed. In addition to minimizing time to market, virtual reality also provides the ability to test products under expected conditions and identify design defects that cannot be highlighted using traditional testing methods. This ensures that the products are designed correctly, and reduces the possibility of product recall and the adverse consequences of other product failures.

Intelligent decision-making

Manufacturing operations need to be agile to keep up with the changing needs of the market and customers. To achieve this, they need to be able to make decisions quickly, but must analyze the available information in detail. However, in order to achieve safe and effective decision-making, the amount of data to be analyzed is too much for decision-makers to easily handle and understand. This will lead to delays in the decision-making process, which will delay the necessary operations and ultimately achieve the opposite effect of agility. It is increasingly clear that using data visualization can enhance the execution of decisions and ensure that not only the answers to questions can be easily found, but also new questions that can drive higher performance and further growth can be found.

The use of virtual and augmented reality in the visualization of manufacturing related data can accelerate the decision-making process at all levels of the manufacturing organization, from high-level strategic decisions to key operational decisions.

Informed maintenance

Equipment failure is a problem that causes unexpected production interruption and requires the maintenance team to respond immediately. Sometimes, the maintenance team may not be around to restore the equipment to the full functional state in time. Visualization of data related to the performance and health of manufacturing equipment enables the maintenance team to identify equipment health problems that are usually not noticed. Using AR equipment to guide amateurs and solve these problems can ensure the normal operation of production facilities, avoid too many long downtime, and greatly improve the utilization of plants and equipment.

quality testing

According to Yior's technical documentation, quality inspection is an important part of the manufacturing process. When organizations strive to maximize productivity, they also emphasize improving product quality and consistency standards. In order to ensure the high quality of products, in addition to adopting automatic detection methods, human quality inspectors often have to detect hundreds of units to find defective units. Due to personnel restrictions, the inspector missed the minor indicators of nonconformity. The combination of augmented reality technology, artificial intelligence and sensor technology can even clarify the subtle deviations in manufacturing cells, so as to achieve higher product quality standards.

Immersive training

For manufacturing employees, on-the-job training is a necessary condition for effective and efficient performance of duties. This process takes time. Deploying inexperienced new employees to perform key operations may reduce the quality of work and even lead to security problems. Training new employees in a virtual reality environment can enable them to gain experience and proficiency in performing their duties without affecting productivity, quality and safety.

The indispensability of virtual reality and augmented reality in the manufacturing industry will become a general trend in the next few years, especially before high-performance and general intelligent robots replace us.