WHILE AUGMENTED REALITY (AR) AND VIRTUAl reality (VR) have been around for some time, manufacturing firms are fast turning to these technologies as they help in speeding up the production process, minimizing risk in supply chains while reducing errors, machines downtime and costs, thus enhancing overall productivity.
In this scenario, the subject that is engaging the manufacturing and supply chain industry is how to go about integrating this technology within the existing digital processes to bring about an improvement in the overall operation and productivity.
Manufacturing Today, in association with TeamViewer, set out to examine the issues in an hour long well-attended webinar, where industry experts deliberated on the intricacies of the topic and laid out their analysis in a manner that stimulates the conversant and the uninitiated alike.
Setting the agenda for the webinar, the Manufacturing Today Editor Syed Ameen Kader briefly talked about the ITP Group and the event’s digital partner TeamViewer, before introducing all the panelists. After appreciating the presence of the dignitaries, he handed over the proceedings to the moderator, Anand Subramanian, who is the Vice President of the TechVision business unit at Frost & Sullivan. The guests on the panel were industry leaders from TeamViewer, Faurecia India, Hindustan Coca-Cola, Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd and Lumax Industries Ltd.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations around the world to achieve growth,” began Subramanian, pointing out the varied imperatives that are causing pressure on growth opportunities.
“Disruptive technologies, convergence associated with those technologies, and transformative mega trends that are shaping up the future,” are the factors causing pressure on the leadership team around the world. Industries are turning to AR/VR expecting it to bring huge improvement in productivity.
Subramanian asked Ajit Deshpande, Country Head IT – India and South East Asia, Faurecia India, to share his experience of how he was leveraging digital technologies such as augmented and virtual reality to further accelerate Faurecia’s digital transformation in India.
Deshpande, with experience of over 12 years as IT Head for a large Indian company, explained they have plants across 35 countries but one third of their design capacity comprising 1500 to 1800 engineers operate from India. The designs built by their Indian teams are getting productionized globally.
“This is where augmented reality, virtual reality and digitization has helped us. We have used these tools to connect internally and to our customers.”
He said that the pandemic has accelerated the growth of digitization in Faurecia.
Talking about machines, Deshpande had an example to share of real-life application of technology to solve problems on the ground.
“We have used the expertise available in Germany to solve our problem at our plant in Andhra Pradesh with the help of virtual tools,” he elaborated.
Subramanian then addressed Senthil Kumar KK, National Manager, Supply Chain Transformation, Hindustan Coca cola, to enquire if he could give some insight as to how they combat key challenges of productivity, asset utilization and process safety.
Kumar, who leads the Digital Transformation in supply chain, took a moment aside to explain augmented reality and virtual reality in a lucid fun way that would be easily comprehending to the unfamiliar among the audience.
Turning to the question, he explained that the challenge was that most of his factories were in remote places. In case of a downtime, he would need his service engineer at the site, assess the problem, and communicate with the OEM sitting in another part of the world. It was time consuming and costly.
“When augmented reality is utilized in finding solutions to maintenance, it becomes a more collaborative effort,” he said.
“In case of downtime, we get things done faster and get solutions in real time. The person on the shopfloor is able to make changes as guided by the person sitting somewhere in another part of the world,” explained Kumar who is responsible for deploying Lean and Six Sigma methodologies across pan India sites.
Subramanian then turned to probe Balamurugan N, Principal Architect, Automation Design, Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd.
Noting how e-commerce has become part of purchases for most of us and aware of the huge amount of data that needs processing for e-commerce, he asked Balamurugan how e-commerce companies like his were using AR/VR to make the platform easier to navigate and enhance the overall visual experience for customers.
Balamurugan, touched upon the evolution of e-commerce where the categories like fashion and vegetables that were not expected to succeed have taken a larger space in the industry.
He pointed out though, that from the customer point of view, it still does not give the same experience as in the physical world where you do a try-and-buy. Customers buy and then return, not finding the expected fit.
“Augmented reality or virtual reality would bring them that experience of personalization, helping them to digitally try it without being physically present. That would be a big game-changer,” maintains Balamurugan, who has a deep experience of designing and implementing large and automated distribution centres for e-commerce companies.
From the retailers’ point of view, the larger share of business used to come from impulsive buying where customers would buy a lot more than what he or she had come for. Retailers in the digital world lost that as the customer searches by categories.
“With augmented reality and virtual reality when customers do immersive buying, it gives back the impulsive buying opportunity back for the retailers,” he said.
Subramanian was quick to remark that Balamurugan already has a marketing strategy associated with leveraging this technology.
Continuing with the webinar, Subramanian drew in Vineet Sahni, Group CEO, Lumax DK Jain Group & Sr. Executive Director – Lumax Industries Ltd; into the conversation.
Subramanian proceeded by asking him to elaborate on how he uses the latest technologies like AR/VR as part of digital transformation to achieve resource optimization and asset utilization.
“We in manufacturing are brick and mortar people and we have a mindset of not accepting new technology,” said Sahni, himself known in the industry for being instrumental in promoting self-reliance in technology for Indian engineers.
According to him, the reason why everybody is now more accepting the new disruptive changes is because the pandemic has left everyone facing the same problem across the globe. There is a homogenous acceptance of the problem.
He referred to the traditional wisdom in the industry that has identified how companies make losses.
“AR and digitization help us in quickly identifying them (possible losses) through predictive maintenance. It is helping us in safety during maintenance and also essentially in productivity,” he elaborated.
Vineet, having an extremely rich techno-commercial background, elaborated with an example of how he was leveraging the new technology. “We have 28 manufacturing facilities in India. When we plan a layout, we use augmented reality to get the most optimized layout,”he said.
At this point Subramanian flagged that one can’t look at AR/VR in isolation. How this can be integrated with a company’s broader digital transformation strategy and goal is the question to be addressed.
He put the question to Krunal Patel, Director & Head of Business, India and South Asia, TeamViewer.
Patel is responsible for the business management of TeamViewer solutions for India and South Asia. TeamViewer is a leading global technology company that provides a connectivity platform for remote access.
“When we are talking about digital transformation, we are talking about transforming the way a particular process is carried out,” Patel replied to give a context to what he would elaborate.
“In the earlier waves, technologies were empowering decision takers with information, data and analytics. The fourth wave is more about the frontline,” he said.
Whether it is IOT to collect the information or giving the information back using the AR to the front line who can fix that, it is about the front- line worker.
“Empowering the frontline worker” is what Patel’s take on the new technologies.
“60%, and in some industries up to 80% of the processes are done by the front-line workers. Improving their productivity by even 10% will be a huge improvement on the overall business productivity of the enterprise,” unfolds Patel who has held key positions in several renowned technology companies.
All of this is possible because of the technologies that are available now.
“Platforms like TeamViewer that have optimized the software to work with the variable with the hardware in a varied environment,” he affirms.
Patel explained this in detail through a presentation in which he narrated how TeamViewer has grown from a normal remote support application to a full-fledged platform and how it provides hundreds of use cases on a single platform.
He explained how augmented reality is impacting people and processes in every department in every industry and how TeamViewer helps enterprises with augmented reality across the entire value chain of industry manufacturing and supply chain processes.
Air Bus for paperless inspection, AGCO Fendt for avoiding paint re-work, Toyota for after sale, Liebherr for visualizing IOT data are some of the prominent users of TeamViewer, he enumerated.
The surprise came as a gift of an offer of discount from TeamViewer to all attendees.
With that, Patel handed over back to Subramanian who after thanking the luminaries of the panel and the enthusiastic attendees handed over to Hafeez Shaikh, the Business Head for Manufacturing Today.
Shaikh thanked Subramanian for moderating the panel discussion so well. He took thought-provoking questions from the attendees which were answered by the esteemed panelists.
All panelists concluded that adoption and usage of technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality are only going to grow as the benefits are immense.
Given the importance of the subject, most panelists agreed that more time should be allocated in future for such thought provoking discussions. Thanking the panelists for their valuable time, Shaikh assured of a longer webinar in the near future considering that the event could not take all the questions for paucity of time.
Panelists:
- Senthil Kumar KK, National Manager, Supply Chain Transformation, Hindustan Coca cola
- Ajit Deshpande, Country Head IT – India and South East Asia, Faurecia India
- Vineet Sahni, Group CEO, Lumax DK Jain Group & Sr. Executive, Director – Lumax Industries Ltd.
- Anand S, Vice President, TechVision, Frost & Sullivan
- Balamurgan N, Principal Architect – Automation Design, Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd.
- Krunal Patel – Director & Head of Business, India & South Asia, TeamViewer