Two BMW production line planning experts in different regions are working together to optimize the assembly of the new production line: “can you tell me how far I want to bend down?” Expert a uses the motion capture kit to enter the assembly simulation system through the wormhole. B, a specialist in a foreign factory, has adjusted the height of the part of the A after evaluating the height of the expert in real time: “I will find a higher platform for you first.”
In Omniverse, NVIDIA’s meta universe platform, two engineers in different places cooperated in real-time design and completed many details of optimizing BMW’s assembly line. This process was also seen by Milan nedeljkovi, director of BMW’s management board, and Huang Renxun, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. They were very satisfied with the digital twin internal environment of this BMW assembly system.
According to NVIDIA, BMW is promoting the use of NVIDIA Omniverse platform internally. This is an easy to expand meta universe platform, which can realize 3D design cooperation and scalable multi GPU real-time simulation, and can coordinate the production of BMW in 31 factories around the world. The relevant person in charge of BMW said that Omniverse is expected to improve BMW’s production planning efficiency by 30%. BMW’s next goal is to reproduce such interactions on a large scale in more factories.
Foxconn Industrial Internet Co.Ltd(601138) ‘s factory meta universe exploration
Foxconn Group also introduced yuanuniverse into the factory. Foxconn Chengdu Science and technology park is mainly engaged in the production and assembly of consumer electronic products such as tablet computers, notebook computers and smart watches. Facing the dynamic growth of order business, properly solving the problems of labor shortage and rapid employment of assembly workers is an urgent problem for factory managers.
Liu Zongsheng, the chief technical officer and deputy manager of Foxconn, said that the training time of Foxconn‘s Mr technology curve was shortened compared with that of the traditional one.
At Foxconn Chengdu Hongfujin precision electronics factory, a prospective “loader” needs to constantly watch and practice the mr/vr training course like a martial arts script before taking the post – employees wear Mr helmets in the training classroom, while watching the content presented in the course video, while repeatedly practicing and familiarizing themselves with the key points of more than 10 process steps for future work. According to the relevant person in charge of the factory, the introduction of MR equipment has shortened the original two-week training time to less than one week. Compared with the traditional training mode of watching PPT and video, this immersive game training scenario is more popular with post-90s young people.
At present, Mr training has been introduced into the employee training of many posts such as feeding, testing and assembly in Foxconn Chengdu factory, and more than 1000 employees have left the “yuancosmic training class” to take up their posts.
According to the 2021 white paper on the global lighthouse network released by the world economic forum and McKinsey, Foxconn Chengdu plant has improved labor efficiency by 200% and OEE (comprehensive efficiency of equipment) by 17% by using hybrid reality (MR), artificial intelligence and Internet of things technologies.
Remote collaborative work and management is also a new scene of industrial meta universe that Foxconn Industrial Internet Co.Ltd(601138) is exploring. “The industrial metauniverse tends to reproduce a real world.” Liu Zongchang introduced the application scenario of Foxconn Industrial Internet Co.Ltd(601138) using metauniverse to improve factory management efficiency. He said that due to the limitations of time and space, the interactive experience of communicators in different places is not perfect. For large multinational companies such as Foxconn, which need to manage overseas production bases all over China and even Vietnam and India, there are even many shackles.
The above problems are more prominent in the post epidemic era, and the traditional face-to-face communication is difficult to achieve. At this time, the management needs to see the PPT report of the local person in charge, the dashboard (business intelligence dashboard) and the relevant data intelligence system to master the production of remote factories. In Liu Zongchang’s opinion, such a report has two shortcomings: first, the report of PPT and other documents will be affected by human factors, and there is a certain discount on the authenticity; Second, when the indicators are abnormal, it is also necessary to investigate the reasons and inquire about the details during the traceability analysis.
Using meta factory can improve the efficiency of managers in managing factories around the world. Headquarters managers roam through the “1-to-1 restore factory” in the form of avatar, have real-time communication with the local person in charge avatar, and can also stop to see the real-time data generated by the factory on the operation panel of each employee operating the equipment, so as to truly realize walking, watching and chatting; When looking for the causes of abnormal business indicators, there is no need to “talk on paper”. You can “go” to any corner of the factory to find the potential influencing factors affecting business indicators.
In the morning, you can conduct research in Zhengzhou Foxconn factory, and in the afternoon, you can transfer to Shenzhen Foxconn production base, or even the production base in Vietnam or India, so that managers have the super ability of “traveling 80000 miles a day, patrolling the sky and watching a thousand rivers remotely”, which further improves the remote management efficiency of the factory.
industrial meta universe integrates people, fields and numbers
Pack the food in an insulated lunch box, fill the extra large thermos with hot water, install the car anti-skid chain on the car tire, bring the data record book and tools, and wear a thick down jacket, scarf, gloves and hat… This is the preparation for Yang Jin, an engineer of an oil and gas development company in China, to go to the oil and gas plant to carry out inspection equipment. The oil and gas company is headquartered in a provincial capital city in Northeast China. The natural gas produced by the company is mainly supplied to some urban residents in the province and related enterprises in many industrial fields such as machining and building materials manufacturing.
“Energy industries such as hydropower, oil and gas have the characteristics of large working radius, long line and poor working environment, and have high requirements for safety and fault handling efficiency.” Chen Xirui, head of liangfengtai market, told China Electronics News. Based on this operation demand of the energy industry, the maintenance and overhaul of energy production equipment and the efficient feedback processing of equipment sudden faults have become the stage for the “big show” of the meta universe.
Starting from Changchun City, Yang Jin went to Siping oil production plant, Songyuan gas production plant, Songyuan oil production plant and Zhangwu oil production plant under the jurisdiction of the company. The normal distance ranged from 2 to 3.5 hours. If there was a snowy day, the journey time would be doubled. It’s already noon when we leave for the oil and gas plant in the morning, and it’s dark when we leave for the destination at noon. The location of the oil and gas plant is remote, and it is inconvenient to open fire and cook based on the needs of production safety. Whether it is leaders’ inspection or engineers’ regular maintenance of the equipment, they should bring their own dry food.
“Once we encounter a problem that cannot be solved by the on-site personnel, we have to personally go to the oil field more than 300 kilometers away for on-site diagnosis. Sometimes it’s just a small problem, which can be solved in 10 minutes, but the whole day is delayed on the way to and from the oil and gas field.” Yang Jin said.
In December 2021, the oil and gas company cooperated with liangfengtai to inject meta cosmic tools such as AR glasses and AR visualization software into the field of energy industry by taking equipment maintenance and on-site survey as the cut-off point – the resident employees of each oil and gas field wear liangfengtai ar glasses hiar G200 for on-site inspection. Engineers far away from the headquarters in Changchun can see the real-time picture of the first perspective through the AR visualization cooperation management platform, and conduct AR management through the software Ar space labeling and other operations for remote command, inspection, operation and maintenance, etc.
Using 5g and GPS positioning return, the resident workers can operate while talking and communicating while wearing ar glasses, which ensures the authenticity and accuracy of the operation points and does not delay the operation with both hands; In addition, the whole process of AR operation can be automatically stored in the system database to form traceable inspection data.
“From on-site security inspection to remote security inspection, it took one day before. Now it takes only two hours if it’s fast.” Yang Jin said that if there is an emergency, workers stationed in the oil and gas fields can also connect with experts in Changchun and Beijing at any time to ensure production safety.
Chen Xirui said that relying on sensors, Internet of things, industrial Internet platform, AR terminal equipment and other equipment and technologies to form an industrial meta universe can not only realize the real-time connection of production data such as temperature, voltage and humidity, achieve the integration of human + (current) field + number (word), but also provide equipment information The information background of historical data – the combination of previous equipment failure causes + current real-time data can provide sufficient information reference for decision makers.
industrial metauniverse is still in the early stage of development
Industry is regarded as a key industry for the realization of explosive applications in the meta universe. Jibang consulting predicts that the global industrial yuan market will exceed US $540 billion in 2025, with a compound growth rate of 15.35% from 2021 to 2025.
Xie Haiqin, deputy general manager of Haier CAOS IOT Ecological Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with China Electronics News that industrial yuan universe is expected to “virtual” and “real” integration in R & D and design, production optimization, equipment operation and maintenance, product testing, skill training, transnational and cross regional cooperation and other links; It is expected to form a new “meta universe + manufacturing, + service” system on the basis of improving efficiency and quality, so as to promote the high-quality application of industrial digitization and the high-level development of digital industrialization.
With Omniverse platform, AI and computing capabilities, NVIDIA is cooperating with partners to explore the construction of industrial meta universe Foxconn Industrial Internet Co.Ltd(601138) regards it as one of the three important engines of future business growth; Google also smelled the business opportunities of yuancosmos and spent US $40 million to join hands with Hon Hai to further deepen bilateral cooperation in industrial yuancosmos and other fields; The substance 3D modeler tool to be launched by Adobe, a global software giant, can meet the immersive content creation of metauniverse in VR work training and other application scenarios.
Ma Tianyi, chief analyst of metauniverse of Minsheng Securities Research Institute, told the reporter of China Electronics News that industrial metauniverse is in an early stage of development, which is characterized by the mutual cooperation of international giants, large multinational manufacturing enterprises and large computing enterprises to jointly lead the industry to technological change.
China’s industrial Internet enterprises also continue to pay attention to the industrial meta universe. Combined with the meta universe scene, helcaos launched products and Solutions – CAOS d3os to explore a new model of meta universe + manufacturing industry; The aerospace cloud network has realized the quality improvement and efficiency increase of the industrial yuan universe in the heat treatment plant; Ar solution enterprises represented by liangfengtai cut into the industrial meta universe from the vertical industry in the mode of AR hardware + software platform.
On this track, there is also the figure of the meta universe platform. “With the enrichment of the Greek soil world, industry and manufacturing are gradually reflected in the Greek soil world. At present, manufacturing enterprises such as Lingke automobile have become the first batch of settled enterprises.” Ding Zhigang, general manager of Baidu virtual reality, said in an interview with China Electronics News. Baidu xirang is a virtual world that includes all walks of life. With the continuous iteration and development of infrastructure and technical capabilities, more and more b-end vertical applications, including industry / manufacturing, will find suitable scenes in the meta universe.
The industrial meta universe, which is still in the early stage of development, faces many uncertainties, and enterprises are still exploring “one foot deep and one foot shallow”. In Xie Haiqin’s view, the transformation of metauniverse from concept to application still needs the continuous cooperation and attempt of the government, enterprises and scientific research institutions to deepen the value mining of application scenarios; Accelerate the construction of new infrastructure such as digitization and computing power, and accelerate the application of VR / AR and other related hardware key equipment, so as to achieve a better input-output ratio.
Liu Zongchang believes that there are three aspects to further improve the sense of experience, infrastructure and technology. For example, there is room for improvement in the indicators related to terminal equipment; High speed and stable network, cloud computing power and other technology supported infrastructure construction need to be further improved and consolidated; In addition, the standardization of the operating system needs to be further improved.
