Lockheed Martin engineers wear the goggles to help them assemble the
crew capsule Orion—without having to read thousands of pages of paper
instructions.
When you work at a factory that pumps out thousands of a single item,
like iPhones or shoes, you quickly become an expert in the assembly
process. But when you are making something like a spacecraft, that
comfort level doesn’t come quite so easily.
“Just about every time, we are building something for the first
time,” says Brian O’Connor, the vice president of production operations
at Lockheed Martin Space.
Traditionally, aerospace organizations have replied upon thousand-page paper manuals to relay instructions to their workers. In recent years, firms like Boeing and Airbus have started experimenting with augmented reality, but it’s rarely progressed beyond the testing phase. At Lockheed, at least, that’s changing. The firm’s employees are now using AR to do their jobs every single day.
Spacecraft technician Decker Jory uses a Microsoft HoloLens headset on a daily basis for his work on Orion, the spacecraft intended to one day sit atop the powerful—and repeatedly delayed—NASA Space Launch System. “At the start of the day, I put on the device to get accustomed to what we will be doing in the morning,” says Jory. He takes the headset off when he is ready to start drilling. For now, the longest he can wear it without it getting uncomfortable or too heavy is about three hours. So he and his team of assemblers use it to learn a task or check the directions in 15-minute increments rather than for a constant feed of instructions.
In the headset, the workers can see holograms displaying models that
are created through engineering design software from Scope AR. Models of
parts and labels are overlaid on already assembled pieces of
spacecraft. Information like torquing instructions—how to twist
things—can be displayed right on top of the holes to which they are
relevant, and workers can see what the finished product will look like.
The virtual models around the workers are even color-coded to the
role of the person using the headset. For Jory’s team, which is
currently constructing the heat shield skeleton of Orion, the new
technology takes the place of a 1,500-page binder full of written work
instructions.
Lockheed is expanding its use of augmented reality after seeing some
dramatic effects during testing. Technicians needed far less time to get
familiar with and prepare for a new task or to understand and perform
processes like drilling holes and twisting fasteners.
These results are prompting the organization to expand its ambitions
for the headsets: one day it hopes to use them in space. Lockheed
Martin’s head of emerging technologies, Shelley Peterson, says the way
workers use the headsets back here on Earth gives insight into how
augmented reality could help astronauts maintain the spacecraft the firm
helped build. “What we want astronauts to be able to do is have
maintenance capability that’s much more intuitive than going through
text or drawing content,” says Peterson.
For now, these headsets still need some adjustments to increase their
wearability and ease of use before they can be used in space. Creating
the content the workers see is getting easier, but it still takes a lot
of effort. O’Connor sees these as obstacles that can be overcome
quickly, though.
“If you were to look five years down the road, I don’t think you will
find an efficient manufacturing operation that doesn’t have this type
of augmented reality to assist the operators,” he says.
Almost everyone’s heard something about the promise of augmented
reality (AR). Next-generation video game action. The future of
interactive movies. Or blockbuster AR investments from heavy-hitters
like Facebook, promising a new way that we’ll connect and interact.
Is this exciting? Absolutely. But there’s more to AR than
hype or novelty. Smart companies are already using AR to redefine how
they get work done and train employees. Aerospace leader Lockheed-Martin is using AR to improve manufacturing efficiency and accuracy of complex spacecraft. Prince Castle uses an AR-based remote assistance tool so
on-site workers at fast food chains can connect with an expert service
technician in real-time to troubleshoot and repair kitchen equipment
more quickly and accurately.
Enterprise AR is not the future. It’s here. A recent Harvard Business Review study
found 68 percent of enterprise executives they surveyed believe that AR
is “important to achieving their companies’ strategic goals in the next
18 months.”
But here’s the catch: The same survey showed that just 32
percent of these executives believe that their senior management
understand the technology and understand the potential benefits it can
bring to their company. It’s time to change some minds.
Are you interested in test-driving AR applications in your
company, but concerned your leadership might not be convinced they’re
ready to adopt — or have the budget for it? Here are three ways to make
the case for enterprise AR at your company.
1. Dream big with AR — but start small
Build a practical AR project that shows real results. For
example, you can’t get started by promising to overhaul your company’s
end-to-end manufacturing process. Find one piece of your process where
AR can make a clear difference in terms of efficiency, build quality,
error reduction, and/or build time.
Is there a complex, costly step in your assembly or
manufacturing process that demands precision? Test-drive AR to show how
virtual instructions or 3D content overlaid onto the real-world could
help your technicians get it done faster, with a lower margin of error.
Measure and share the results among key stakeholders. Then, brainstorm
with your leadership on how you might bring the same results to other
sophisticated procedures or parts of the process.
One clear benefit from starting with an AR pilot, not an
overhaul: you can build an AR project in a week or two. You can
demonstrate viability and ROI quickly, and turn your skeptical CIO into
your partner on the next AR project.
2. Partner with IT as early as possible on your AR deployment A lot of people looking at AR don’t just face skepticism
from the C-level executives. A major roadblock can be the IT leaders
who have to implement and integrate AR within their already-complex IT
landscape. IT decision-makers might see AR as another system to
integrate — and another purchase order that needs approval. And worse,
some of the proprietary AR equipment and software can be expensive.
The good news on cost: An AR investment is lower than you
might think. Many businesses can benefit from AR using the handheld
devices already in their employees’ pockets, minimizing the need for an
additional hardware investment. For example, field technicians or
on-site workers can access intuitive AR instructions and diagrams for
how to conduct maintenance or repair complicated machines, all on their
smartphones or tablets.
As you collaborate with IT on your AR deployment, do not
lose sight of security considerations. Your IT team might not admit this
to you, but security concerns rob them of sleep. Consider security
issues from the start to mark certain that confidential content and data
are protected and that only the required users and devices get access
to AR applications.
For example, some enterprise AR trailblazers leverage their
company’s CAD libraries and use them to create digitized AR
instructions. CAD files are often some of the most critical and guarded
pieces of an enterprise’s intellectual property. (Just think of a
military contractor.) As you plan your AR project, work with IT partners
to ensure you can build within the firewall and follow all IT-governed
protocols.
3. Don’t build your AR deployment from scratch We recently met with a large enterprise company with operations around the globe. The company’s leaders had seen the value AR could bring to their operations and had been approached by a service provider to custom-build a bespoke AR solution and were ready to pull the trigger on development, with a multi-million dollar price tag. They had no idea there were mature toolsets on the market that could dramatically decrease the time-to-market and cost of such a solution.
As it happened, they learned these type of scalable solutions existed — ones that were pre-built and could enable them to grow at scale and quickly create new AR content as needed. The lesson to learn: don’t invent your own AR solution. You can prove ROI in collaboration with vendors who have built out successful AR use cases.
AR isn’t a promise, it’s ready to solve enterprise-level
problems. Get creative, but start small. Partner with IT on deployment,
particularly to ensure security needs are met. And leverage proven AR
success so you scale out to other processes and use cases.
Since co-founding Scope AR in
2011, CEO Scott Montgomerie was one of the first executives to get
augmented reality (AR) tools in use by multi-billion dollar
corporations.
Lockheed Martin’s space division has partnered with Scope AR to support the manufacturing of spacecraft, including NASA’s Orion.
On September 14, Alice Bonasio, Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief posted
an article to TechTrends exploring Lockheed Martin’s expanding use of
Scope AR’s WorkLink, particularly the work done on their Orion project
using Scope AR’s WorkLink. Some highlights from the article:
“In a complex field where errors simply cannot be made, Scope AR’s
WorkLink Augmented Reality platform has tremendously helped our space
division build high quality spacecraft by reducing the time it takes to
interpret work instructions by more than 95 percent, as well as reducing
training time and errors significantly,” says Shelley Peterson,
emerging technologies lead, Lockheed Martin. “The ability to easily use
the product across platforms means that anyone on our team, including
our interns, can take advantage of AR to build and use manufacturing
instructions quickly and accurately.”
Over the course of their AR deployment, the team achieved an
astonishing 95% reduction in the time it takes technicians to interpret
drawings and text instructions and 85% reduction in overall time for
training.
On August 1, in the Wall Street Journal, Sara Castellanos posted an article exploring Lockheed Martin’s use of augmented reality, particularly the work done on their Orion project using Scope AR’s WorkLink. Some highlights from the article:
Lockheed Martin Corp.’s space division is using augmented reality
headsets and software to speed up the time it takes for engineers to
learn about and conduct manufacturing processes on spacecraft, said
Yvonne Hodge, the division’s vice president and chief information
officer.
“This is a really exciting capability that can really accelerate us and make us more competitive,” she said. Before, for example, technicians used paper instructions or 3-D models on a computer in certain manufacturing processes of Orion. Now, instead of having to look through binders of data or content on the computer across the room, they can wear an AR device such as HoloLens, which overlays instructions for drilling or applying torque to specific parts of the spacecraft, said Shelley Peterson, augmented reality systems engineer at Lockheed Martin.
The time it takes for a technician to “ramp up,” or to understand the
drilling processes, has been reduced from eight hours to about 45
minutes using augmented reality headsets, she said. It recently took
about 2 weeks to conduct a manufacturing process which involved drilling
and inserting panels into the Orion spacecraft, Ms. Peterson said. That
process had taken about six weeks in the past, she said.
Today in ARtillry, Mike Boland posted an article about the incredible ROI metrics experienced by Lockheed Martin, Unilever and Prince Castle. Here are some highlights from the article:
As we’ve examined in past reports and our latest market sizing
figures, enterprise AR’s biggest friction is with enterprises
themselves. This is due to typical red tape, sales cycles and risk
aversion. But the walls are breaking down and we could see a tipping
point in the next few years.
This is the adoption pattern we saw with enterprise smartphone adoption over the past 10 years: Like that shift, enterprise AR (and VR for that matter) will build slow then happen fast.
Speaking of Scope AR, it also announced it’s integrating its two main
products: Remote AR and WorkLink. The former enables remote live
assistance, while the latter enables creation and authoring of AR
instructions which are then overlaid on machine parts with dimensional
accuracy.
Bringing them together makes sense and creates a “whole is greater
than the sum of its parts” dynamic. For example, pre-authored
instructions can guide field workers, but then remote subject mater
experts (SME) can drop in via video call for an additional layer of “see
what I see” support.
This makes the product suite more versatile, which should in turn
support Scope AR’s continued growth, which has been strong so far. For
example, the combined product could accelerate penetration into new
verticals beyond the industrial settings where Scope AR focuses today.
This week in Tom’s Hardware, Kevin Carbotte published an article about the merging of Scope AR’s two products, Remote AR and WorkLink. Here are some highlights from the article:
Scope AR today revealed its plans to bring the Remote AR and WorkLink applications together as one.
Scope AR offers two enterprise-level augmented reality applications. The company’s WorkLink software enables hardware manufacturers to create 3D augmented reality repair procedure instructions for on-site service technicians to follow, and Remote AR is remote assistance application that enables service technicians to collaborate in real time with remote product experts who can advise on a repair.
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