Augmented Reality do for Manufacturing

 

It is easy to see the benefits that AR brings to the general consumers: we have AR helping people to try out shoes, put furniture in their living rooms, play with models of elephants of tigers and whatnot, and have more immersive gaming experience.

But when it comes to Augmented Reality applications in manufacturing, some people might have trouble wrapping their hands around it. So we will break it down here.

So, here are several activities you can enhance with Augmented Reality:

1. Product Design. AR cn be a great help when designing vehicles, planes, houses, and production equipment. The technology provides a new perspective on how we can interact with designs and prototypes. The main advantage here is not only the immersiveness of the experience but also the fact that the product can be changed and studied without the need to build physical prototypes.
   
   On top of that, engineers get better feedback from the product they’re working on. They can get information about the internal construction, materials, and so on.
2. Product Assembly. There are certain production lines where humans should do their job manually, but we can do some things to make the process easier. Wearing the AR headsets, production line workers can human instructions, visual information, and clues right in front of their eyes, which does not get in the way of their work. This way it is easier to control the production process and have all the necessary information at hand.
3. Staff training. When it comes to hiring new workers, they have to learn how to operate a specific production line. It takes valuable time — time that they could spend more effectively.
   
   So, Augmented Reality provides a way for the new workers to have guidelines, manuals and real-time instructions in front of them as they work on a line. It allows the manufacturer to save time on training while boosting it’s efficiency and keeping mistakes to a minimum.
4. Production downtime and maintenance. Sometimes equipment fails. There’s no way around that. But it doesn't mean that you should cease trying to get it up and running as fast as possible.
   
   If your factory is already powered by IoT ad you have a pool of data on the equipment condition, you can use AR technology and headsets to visualize the data for the maintenance workers. That will help them to quickly find the root cause of the problem and fix it.
5. Data access. AR technology can be helpful for the production site and warehouse navigation as well. For instance, you can have AR display info on a specific product’s whereabouts on the warehouse. Or that could be a specific department on the production site. Also, you can enable step by step navigation, making it super easy to find.

Augmented Reality has a huge potential when it comes to enhancing the manufacturing process. It allows for more transparent and efficient factory management.