Page 13 - EE Times Europe Magazine | April2019

EE|Times EUROPE 13

Flex Visualizes AR/VR in Manufacturing’s Future

these types of initiatives not only yield internal workforce benefits
but ultimately improve relationships with customers and supply chain
partners, providing competitive advantages. Industrial enterprises are
focusing on harnessing AR capabilities across their value chains.

BUILDING BETTER PRODUCTS
Flex foresees AR/VR uses for both employee training and product
development. Onboarding a worker in a factory setting is typically
loud and distracting. Rather than train workers on the factory floor, VR
can immerse them in a virtual environment. For industrial enterprises
offering AR experiences to enhance their workforce, 69% of use cases
are focused on benefiting their internal workers in engineering, manu-
facturing, service, and training, according to PTC.
For EMS companies and their customers, relationships largely
revolve around hardware. Here, Flex envisions breakthroughs in the
design and production of the headsets required for AR/VR experiences.
Current headsets are bulky, awkward, and slow, and they provide a
limited perspective, yet some employees may be required to use them
at work.
“Your workforce are also consumers,” Mehkri noted. “So we ask
ourselves, would they go out and purchase this hardware and wear it
all day? The answer is no. AR/VR hardware in general requires a lot of
improvement for it to be made, accepted, and used.”
This is technology that Flex has been looking at for years, he added.
(Image: PTC) “We see it becoming more prevalent in industry. Penetrating consumer
lifestyle with breakthroughs from the manufacturing sector is really
skip a step that’s crucial to manufacturing. “We can show customers that what drives the industry.
process in the ‘real world’ and capture that for future use cases.” “This is where a lot of things come together to drive technology
For manufacturers, use cases are most often utilizing step-by-step forward.” ■
instructions to speed the completion of tasks and improve work quality
and collaboration among workers. As consumer expectations rise, Barbara Jorgensen is managing editor of EPSNews.

www.eetimes.eu | APRIL 2020