Page 12 - EE Times Europe Magazine | April2019

12 EE|Times EUROPE

SPECIAL REPORT: AUGMENTED/VIRTUAL/MIXED REALITY
Flex Visualizes AR/VR in Manufacturing’s Future

By Barbara Jorgensen

s AR/VR technologies come of age, manufacturers are finding way they communicate — to each other and with machines,” Mehkri
ways to adopt these technologies on a variety of fronts, said. Machines are digitized and people are analog, so AR/VR adds a
including product development, training, maintenance, layer of human-device connectivity.
Arepair, and worker safety. Flex, a US$25 billion electronics “We see uses such as remote assistance, or you can collaborate with
design and manufacturing services (EMS) provider, envisions expand- people anywhere in the world on a design and draw something in real
ing that universe even further. time,” he said. Users can send out information and share what they’re
AR/VR is so important to the manufacturing industry that Flex has doing as they’re doing it.
adopted it as one of six key pillars of its Industry 4.0 strategy. The com- Most enterprises are adopting AR for their internal use and benefit,
pany’s focus includes enhancing its global manufacturing processes marking improvements in operational efficiency or lower costs as main
and delivering customer solutions through M2M communications, value drivers, according to research by PTC, a digital solutions provider.
smart automation and robotics, augmented/virtual reality, 3D manu- To achieve these benefits, use cases are being developed that leverage
facturing, simulation and visualization, and business intelligence. AR to provide instruction or guidance. The interact capability, or using
“[AR/VR] is something that will not only impact Flex but the industry AR to manipulate digital graphics or interface with a smart, connected
in general,” said Zohair Mehkri, XR and simulation engineering man- product, is an emerging capability that will grow as AR becomes inte-
ager at Flex. “It has a place in design, usability, and product life-cycle grated with more business.
management. The use case depends on where the product is in its life The way in which manufacturing information has been documented,
cycle. AR and VR are usually lumped together, but they are inherently maintained, and shared has historically been slow and costly. Flex sees
different in the development of the products.” applications for institutional knowledge.
“This kind of experience is usually shared on-site or through
people talking with one another,” Mehkri said. “If it is archived, it’s a
bunch of work instructions followed by a process-definer that outlines
the product.” That doesn’t capture the art of making the product.
“The way a designer places their finger or bends a wire — that’s
a level of experience that isn’t always captured,” he said. “AR could
be used to show the best way to make something and having that
information on record to be studied and archived. You have a library
of best practices.”

WOWING THE CUSTOMER
Opportunities to leverage AR/VR capabilities across the value chain
are diverse, with the heaviest concentrations in design, manufacturing,
service, and training.
Design use cases typically drive the design-for-excellence (DFX)
value propositions, wherein designers visualizing products at scale can
engineer based on manufacturing and service efficiencies, sustainabil-
ity, cost, or ergonomics. Productivity is gained by a reduction in design
iterations and by working those downstream efficiencies into the
design requirements more efficiently.
Even the most experienced designer doesn’t always account for
how a product is physically built. “We could use AR to collaborate
with designers and provide remote assistance,” Mehkri said. “Now, a
customer-support check could mean flying halfway around the world.
Telecommunications and video are solving some of those problems, but
content is lacking.”
EMS companies have a unique position in the electronics supply Augmented reality can display annotations on a project or visually
chain; Flex’s 100 facilities worldwide are outsourced to original equip- demonstrate how to complete a task. “With AR, you can draw on a field
ment and original design manufacturers (OEMs/ODMs). Manufacturing of vision, insert bubbles, or have manuals pop up for the application,”
services alone yield razor-thin profit margins, so EMS providers add Mehkri said. “You get closer to your expertise, and that can be used for
value through design assistance, process improvement, and after- both customers and suppliers.”
market services. Virtual reality can show customers how their end product will look.
If AR/VR technologies catch on as predicted, combined sales are fore- Drawings or PowerPoint presentations are two-dimensional, whereas
cast to hit US$150 billion by 2020, according to a Manatt Digital Media VR immerses users in an environment.
estimate — with AR alone accounting for about US$120 billion. “Customers ask us how a production line is laid out, and with a VR
headset, we can ‘walk’ around the line, or [you can] ‘poke’ your head
CONNECTIVITY IS KEY into each machine,” said Mehkri. “You can also show customers what
Connectivity is driving the manufacturing industry’s interest in works or doesn’t work in their design or where [the designers might]
AR/VR. “You hear all the buzzwords [such as] IoT and M2M, and one need to make a design change.”
way to think about this is connecting people — the way they move, the During product design, Mehkri added, customers may unintentionally

APRIL 2020 | www.eetimes.eu