More and more Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) use cases are appearing and providing a glimpse of the future for manufacturing, large and small. It may seem like augmented reality (AR), 3D printing, and 5G are years away, but if you evaluate your manufacturing operation from a data perspective, the future could be now.
Data’s Driving Big and Small Manufacturers to Test AR Technology
While Lockhead Martin is a large manufacturer, the problem it dealt with in its spacecraft program is similar to that of many modern manufacturers, the amount of data its employees had to process to do their jobs was slowing things down.
In an interview with Lockheed Martin’s Shelley Peterson by engineering.com, Peterson used the term “information overhead” for what the company calls the amount of time employees must spend interpreting the data needed to perform their jobs. For example, the tolerances for assembly are extremely tight and requires a lot of measuring and re-measuring during assembly and quality control.
With 50% of employee time being spent on just working with data the company decided to experiment with Microsoft’s Hololens and Scope AR software to see if time could be saved by making information and analytics tools available everywhere the employee went. While still in early phases of the experiment, Peterson reported very positive ROI in just the time savings reported in a few portions of the assembly process.
AGCO, an agricultural equipment manufacturer, had a similar high-information overhead that AR helped address. For AGCO, every piece of equipment they manufacture is custom and there is a lot of data to share with line employees to make sure each piece is built to customer specifications. Instead of wasting time walking back and forth between a monitor and the equipment, employees now wear Google Glass and have access to all the data about an order right in front of their eyes…all while keeping their hands free.
According to an interview with Peggy Gulick at AGCO, by putting Google Glass on employees during their shift, the company saw a 30% improvement in the manufacturing process, 50% reduction in training time, and 30% improvement in quality assurance time. Just think what that kind of improvement would mean to your operations bottom line.
Is Your Data Ready for Industry 4.0?
Two very different manufacturers, but both with the same need to get manufacturing data in front of key employees to save time, improve quality and reduce training time. In both of these cases, the display technology were AR devices worn by the employees, but access to manufacturing data was what powered the improvements.
Triple Helix specializes in helping manufacturers assess, organize and analyze their data to drive process improvements that have measurable impact to the bottom line. If you would like to get more out of your data, contact us to schedule a risk-free consultation.
