A New Age of Productivity: The Benefits of Augmented Reality (AR) in Manufacturing

Manufacturers are increasingly using Augmented Reality (AR) in their digital transformation strategy in order to improveproductivity and project planning, as well as reduce training costs. Kevin Robson, Segment Leader Operations & Assembly at Schaeffler UK, discusses some of the benefits their Sheffield plant is seeing since investing in AR:

“In a world where digitalisation is on the rise, we are uncovering many opportunities where we can utilise AR to show other colleagues at Schaeffler our ideas, and how we’ve used automation systems to improve our workflows and make cost savings.

The beginning of our AR journey commenced in early 2020 when we purchased a Microsoft HoloLens AR vision system. The HoloLens allows the wearer, and colleagues working remotely, to see real life environments as well as use the display as a whiteboard to demonstrate ideas or workflows. This was specifically convenient during the COVID-19 lockdowns. When many of our employees were working remotely, information based on real-time knowledge was able to be passed to shopfloor personnel,allowing them to repair equipment and machines, improve workflows and actively problem solve. We also saved flight and hotel costs for several engineers based in Germany who, without AR, would have needed to physically be at the Sheffield plant for us to share ideas and demonstrate our planned automation investments within real time.” Robson tells us.

AR also allows manufacturers the ability to problem solve before purchasing and anticipate things before implementing. “We recently used the headset to integrate a new machine and were able to accurately visualise how it would fit into line before making the purchase.” States Robson.

Click here to discover Schaeffler’s future evolutions in AR: Seeing the unforeseen | Schaeffler (UK) Ltd