Augmented Reality – How to Up Your Manufacturing Game

Virtual and augmented reality technologies are part of many conversations about how to “up your game” for manufacturing operations and shop floor activities. Specific applications in various areas significantly improve efficiency, accuracy, safety, and worker retention. However, it may not be readily apparent how to implement these solutions to achieve these benefits.

Augmented reality (AR) allows the industrial sector to gain effectiveness and efficiency while reducing errors and associated costs. However, it also includes defect detection assistance, improved production rate, increased safety for your factory and teams, increased productivity, reduced cycle times, and reduced costs.

Take a look at augmented reality’s positive impact

Efficiency

AR solutions today can tremendously shorten production cycles and improve the overall efficiency of operational teams. This is done through capabilities like assembly assistance, quality operations, automated inspections, enhanced traceability and maintenance. In addition to becoming more effective and fast with tasks, you can optimize processes and provide operators with digital instructions. By supplying operators with visual digital work instructions in the real-world environment, they can work efficiently on preparation tasks or interpreting documentation.

Quality and Accuracy

An augmented reality solution allows you to anticipate errors. With an AR tool, quality control information is contextualized and localized to simplify the inspection process. Operators are guided through each inspection point using 3D data imported directly into the field and superimposed on the part to be inspected throughout the manufacturing process. This capability supports efficient validation of product conformity. In addition, errors are precisely localized, allowing the proper corrective and repair actions to be applied.

But the best way to reduce quality problems is to avoid assembly errors in advance. Augmented reality effectively guides the operator to achieve “first time right” via the contextualization of work instructions and their display in the field, making them intelligible.

Safety

Integrating augmented reality solutions in your factory can positively affect team training. The simple fact of using augmented reality contributes to your operators’ training and increases their skills. Using digital work instructions projected in the field or visualized through a tablet or augmented reality glasses, your field teams receive the right information at the right time and become operational more quickly.

It is proven that using a virtual world facilitates the assimilation of information communicated and its application in the field. This way, your operators develop much more intuitive gestures allowing them to become more autonomous and to respond well to possible issues.

Integrating an augmented reality solution fits perfectly into a training strategy. It facilitates the transmission of knowledge within your company and develops your operators’ autonomy more quickly, thanks to its more intuitive content.

Worker Recruitment and Retention

Augmented reality technologies can also improve your factories’ safety and comfort. For example, complex assembly operations or maintenance actions provide significant support, consider many risk factors, and detail faults with better accuracy than any other resource (documentation or technicians).

• Comfort: The various hardware configurations compatible with augmented reality solutions allow workers to adapt to the workstation. The variety of hardware enables them to work hands-free and avoid numerous return trips to the office. A savings of time and energy that also provides comfort for your teams.

• Technician safety: Your operators are better guided and accompanied step-by-step with alerts displayed in AR at the proper process moment.

In many areas, augmented reality can raise business profitability through increased productivity, safety, employee retention, and knowledge capture. However, one of the best ways to determine your specific business needs and which solutions to consider is to ensure you partner with the best solution provider.

Take our short quiz and assess your AR expertise. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, our quiz is designed to be both fun and informative—giving you a deeper understanding of AR’s impact on your business.

DELMIA helps companies assess their existing production configuration and how to deploy augmented reality in their facilities and connect with the broader DELMIA Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) capabilities. By taking this initiative in digital transformation, companies will be a step closer to realizing the Factory of the Future in their value network and the capabilities and benefits that come with it.

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