The manufacturing industry has a long history of constant innovation. In this “man versus machine” industry, there has always been a precarious balance between innovation and having the right labor force to successfully drive these innovations. A new skills gap study by Deloitte predicts that 4.6 million new manufacturing jobs will be created in the U.S. between 2018 and 2028. More than half (2.4 million) of these new jobs are predicted to be unfilled.
“Why?” you may ask. As an aging workforce is soon walking out the
door, taking with them years of expert knowledge, the manufacturing
industry is now facing tremendous pressure to do more with less. Costs
of equipment, product assembly, and workforce training are continuing to
rise. At the same time, technology is driving an even greater need for a
skilled labor force as the complexity of machines and manufacturing
equipment is also increasing. These drivers are creating new challenges
for manufacturing companies to identify innovative ways to save time,
cut costs and ensure their more generalist workforce has the knowledge
they need to successfully complete their jobs.
Augmented Reality (AR) is proving to be one of the most impactful
technologies influencing the manufacturing industry, helping many
enterprises in the space overcome current obstacles. Workers can now
connect in real-time to get the expert help they need, reducing errors
and equipment downtime. Knowledge experts even have the ability to share
predefined AR-driven work instructions for common problems in the
field. AR technologies can also jump start training processes by
circumventing the need for large volumes of paperwork instructions or
user manuals. Workers can access intuitive AR content on-demand, which
is overlaid on top of a piece of equipment or machine in the real world,
dramatically reducing the time it takes to reach a certain competency
level or even learning a new procedure on the fly.
A perfect example of how AR is transforming the manufacturing world is with Lockheed Martin, an American global aerospace company, and their current project of building the Orion spaceship. Historically, aerospace companies have been dependent on paper manuals (sometimes thousands of pages in length) to access detailed manufacturing instructions. As you can imagine, building a spacecraft takes incredible precision—it’s a “measure twice, cut once” scenario magnified to the extreme. Using AR, Lockheed Martin’s Space division technicians can now see digital information and assembly instructions overlaid onto components of the spacecraft. The results have been dramatic. They have seen a 35-50 percent reduction in overall technician time, a 90-99 percent reduction in the time it takes technicians to interpret drawings and text instructions and an 85 percent reduction in overall time for training.
Unilever, a British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company, is
another great use case where AR is driving dramatic ROI. They are using
real-time remote assistance AR technologies to connect workers on the
factory line with experts located in a different part of their
campus. This enables manufacturing factory line workers to solve
problems quickly and dramatically reduce downtown of essential
equipment. They have experienced a 50 percent reduction in overall
downtime and an impressive 1,700+ percent ROI relative to their cost of
using the AR solution.
A final example is with Prince Castle, a manufacturer of steaming,
toasting and smallwares technology. Prince Castle supplies the leading,
global fast food chain with food preparation and other kitchen equipment
such as toasters. When their highly specialized equipment becomes
inoperable, Prince Castle contracts with general contractors in local
markets to come onsite and assess the problem. Using an AR-based live
video calling solution, these general contractors can quickly and
accurately diagnose the problem and get immediate remote expert advice
to fix the equipment. As a result of adopting AR solutions, Prince
Castle has experienced an amazing 100 percent success rate in diagnosing
the problem on the first visit, a reduction of 50 percent of the
service trips needed to properly repair a piece of equipment and a 50-80
percent reduction in labor spend.
With a dwindling labor force coupled with an increased need for
highly trained and specialized workers, the importance of technologies
like AR will play an increasingly critical role in the manufacturing
industry. Early adopters have already realized they must transform
business processes to improve worker efficiency, reduce equipment
downtime and maintenance costs, and more accurately diagnose and resolve
support and repair issues—and that AR can be the answer to these
challenges. More and more manufacturers will realize the benefits AR can
deliver and its impact will become even more pervasive in the years
ahead.
Scott Montgomerie is the co-founder and CEO of Scope AR.
Remember Glass? When Google introduced its augmented reality (AR) eyewear, the initial excitement faded into disdain for early adopters, who earned a memorable nickname: Glassholes. The user affectation, as well as the cost and paucity of reasons to actually use them in nature, doomed AR wearables in the consumer electronics space, at least for now. But that changes if you look to the factory or shop floor, writes Jake Swearingen in the Intelligencer section of New York magazine. “In such settings, augmented-reality smart glasses are already being deployed across a wide swath of industries.” Scott Montgomerie, CEO and co-founder of Scope AR (San Francisco, CA), was an early advocate of AR in the manufacturing space and has played a key role in its adoption at companies such as Lockheed Martin and GE. He will speak to his experience at the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Summit during the co-located PLASTEC West and Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West event in Anaheim, CA, on Feb. 5 to 7, 2019. In advance of the event, he shared some perspectives on the technology with PlasticsToday.
The eureka moment regarding AR opportunities in manufacturing came to
Montgomerie at a mining convention in Las Vegas. “We began playing
around with AR in 2012, when a big mining company came to Scope AR,
asking if our technology could be used for training. We did a proof of
concept, which went really well, and the company asked us to bring it to
a trade show in Las Vegas later that year.” The demo was an instant
hit, with a constant stream of attendees telling Montgomerie and his
colleagues that it was “the coolest thing” at the show. “And we were,
like, really? Because those giant mining trucks with wheels
bigger than your living room looked really cool to us!” recalled
Montgomerie. Nevertheless, the die was cast. Scope AR started getting
contracts from the likes of Toyota, Boeing and NASA. By 2015, “we
decided that this platform was going to scale and there needed to be an
easy way to create instructions and interact,” said Montgomerie.
Scope AR’s WorkLink allows users with no prior coding skills to
create rich AR smart instructions that automatically collect data and
provide actionable insights, which can be deployed globally through an
app. Instead of rifling through paper instructions, users are immersed
in computer-generated 3D imagery that overlays on top of the real world,
explains the company on its website. The software is platform
agnostic—”we want people to be able to use the technology they feel
comfortable with,” explained Montgomerie—and is also the first authoring
system to provide full support for Microsoft’s HoloLens system. The
company also offers Remote AR, which allows a worker to collaborate
remotely with an expert, both of whom are seeing the same thing as if
they were standing side by side. The possibilities and efficiencies that
can be achieved are head spinning.
Using a HoloLens, for example, instructions can be overlaid on a part
or piece of equipment using 3D models to perform maintenance or
assemble a part, explained Montgomerie. Human error is dramatically
reduced and efficiency skyrockets. Montgomerie cites Unilever, which
reported an astonishing return on investment of more than 1,700%, and
Lockheed Martin, which reduced manufacturing time by 50%.
“I’m particularly fond of the Lockheed Martin use case, which involves the space shuttle,” Montgomerie told PlasticsToday.
It is making a “capsule with 3000 fasteners that need to be tightened.
The old way of doing it was to paw through a 3000-page binder, look up
the table, find the fastener in question, look up the torque setting,
crawl into a tight space to get to the fastener, set the torque, do
quality assurance to verify it was tightened properly, and rinse and
repeat 3000 times,” said Montgomerie. “Our AR technology shows the
technician where the fastener is and on top of that displays the torque
setting. Productivity was improved by 50%,” said Montgomerie.
If the task is more complex and requires expert assistance, Remote AR
offers a time-saving solution. “Suppose you have a part that doesn’t
fit and you need to reach out to a manufacturing engineer or even the
OEM,” explained Montgomerie. To help out, typically the expert would
have to physically come to the shop floor. That could take days in some
cases. With our technology, they can communicate over video in real time
and real space across synchronized devices.”
Employee training is another area where AR is revolutionizing
processes in organizations as disparate as the U.S. military and
Walmart. Writing in Forbes, AR and virtual reality entrepreneur
Lorne Fade notes that Microsoft has made a $480 million deal with the
U.S. Army to train troops for complex, dangerous real-world situations
via AR and that Walmart has partnered with Oculus and Strivr to teach
personnel internal processes in an immersive AR-enabled way. For
Montgomerie, AR technology may even represent a partial solution to the
skills gap.
“It takes a lot of time to gain expertise—10,000 hours, right? What
if you could receive instructions that are so intuitive that you
wouldn’t have to memorize them?” said Montgomerie. “You can store tons
of information on the internet and then you become the actuator.”
The skills gap is heightened as baby boomers retire en masse. “All of
that knowledge is literally walking out the door,” said Montgomerie. “A
feature that we are working on is the capability of recording
interactions. As the technician is receiving instructions from an
expert, the video, audio and 3D adaptation, on a separate channel, are
being recorded. Later, you can go back and replay that interaction on
top of that piece of equipment.” When the expert retires, his knowledge
stays with the company and continues to educate young workers.
The power of AR in these scenarios and countless others resides in
the richness of the communication channel. “The user interface allows
you to communicate in a much more natural way. Now we’re interacting
with real and virtual objects in a real world setting and that neatly
solves so many problems that stem from a misinterpretation of
instructions. Montgomerie cites an example that almost everyone on the
planet can relate to: Assembling Ikea furniture.
“An expert attempts to communicate through diagrams, but the
technician, or consumer in this example, misunderstands those
instructions and uses the wrong fastener or beam. With AR, you can see
the pieces overlaid on top of the furniture in 3D, and you will
certainly make fewer mistakes. Through that form of communication, you
viscerally understand what you need to do versus trying to interpret
instructions,” said Montgomerie.
And that’s the crux of it: Whether you’re assembling a Dagstorp sofa
or tightening screws on a space shuttle component, AR reduces human
error and accelerates the process. No wonder that the AR market is
forecast to grow at 75% CAGR through 2024, exceeding $50 billion by
2024, according to Market Study Report LLC.
Montgomerie will lead a discussion devoted to modernizing
manufacturing with augmented reality at the co-located Medical Design
& Manufacturing (MD&M) West and PLASTEC West event in Anaheim,
CA. The presentation, scheduled for Feb. 7 at 10:15 AM, is part of the
Smart Manufacturing Innovation Summit. MD&M West and PLASTEC West will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center from Feb. 5 to 7, 2019.
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