Immersive technology in manufacturing

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

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

Manufacturing industry's demand for immersive technology

According to Yi or manufacturing, since the introduction of automation and 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 "light out" manufacturing in the industry terminology, which is especially applicable to the fields that require extremely high precision and have very little demand for customization, change and inspection. The industries that are significant for light-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 changes of customer needs. Therefore, the manufacturing industry needs to be highly flexible, but it is also even more intolerant of disqualification. Although ultimately, these processes will be automated through the use of general-purpose robots, for now, they will require the decision-making ability of dexterous human hands and brains. Unlike general robots with superhuman information processing capabilities, human beings cannot process a large amount of information quickly, so they cannot make decisions based on all available information. They can't perceive or see hidden patterns like AI systems. Therefore, human workers need help in 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, it has proved to be a major game changer for manufacturing participants. It helps the manufacturing process become more efficient by improving the productivity of workers and the utilization of factories, and even helping to improve the design.

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 computer-aided design 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 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) of the product, 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 simulation environment until the design is completed. In addition to minimizing the 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 test methods. This ensures that the products produced are perfect in design, 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 conduct thorough and detailed analysis of available information. However, in order to achieve safe and effective decision-making, the amount of data that needs to be analyzed is too much for decision makers to easily handle and understand. This will lead to delays in the decision-making process, thus delaying the necessary operations and ultimately achieving 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 problems that can drive higher performance and further growth can be found.

Using virtual and augmented reality in manufacturing-related data visualization 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 interruption of production and requires immediate response from the maintenance team. Sometimes, the maintenance team may not be around and cannot restore the equipment to full functional status in time. The visualization of data related to the performance and health of manufacturing equipment can enable the maintenance team to identify equipment health problems that are usually not noticed. Using AR equipment to guide amateurs and solving these problems at the same time can ensure the normal operation of production facilities without too many long downtime, and greatly improve the utilization rate of plants and equipment.

quality testing

According to the preparation of technical documents, quality inspection is an important part of the manufacturing process. When organizations strive to maximize productivity, they also emphasize the improvement of product quality and consistency standards. In order to ensure the high quality of products, in addition to using automated testing methods, human quality inspectors often need to test hundreds of units to find defective units. Due to the personnel limitation, the inspector missed the minor indicators of nonconformity. The combination of augmented reality technology with artificial intelligence and sensor technology can even clarify the subtle deviation on the manufacturing unit, 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 safety problems. Training new employees in the 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, at least until high-performance and general intelligent robots replace us.