How digital transformation is changing the game in packaging
The use of digital tools lowers barriers to change by integrating the digital and physical world. It has advantages over physical processes:
- Rapid Diagnosis
- Visualize In-process Operations in Real Time
- Faster Prototyping
- Visually-based Training
Augmented reality is one way we are using digital to optimize packaging operations. It’s part of our multi-tier, multi-stage vision for digital transformation. We are using augmented reality to help with training, work instructions, inspection instructions and compliance, remote collaboration, and performance monitoring and analytics.
Contact Our Sales Team
How Harpak-ULMA Leverages AR to Enable Customers and Promote a Connected Workforce
Harpak-ULMA partnered with PTC to present this webinar. The growing skills gap and ongoing labor shortage doesn’t just impact use as an equipment manufacturer, but also impacts our end-users as well. By combining augmented reality and industrial IoT, we’ve improved the training efficiency of technicians and support our customers with self-service instructions – ultimately reducing tool rebuilds by 80%.
Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly popular tool to optimize and streamline analytics and business processes. The ability to leverage granular data sets to quickly and accurately produce recommendations and results can transform good solutions into great ones. AI can help businesses identify patterns, predict outcomes, and optimize decision-making processes.
Our product is a major step forward for several reasons. The first is the combination of artificial intelligence with augmented reality for visual work instructions. It’s a first in the industry. Additionally, we have shifted the usage of augmented reality technology in general, from guiding through an overall process and then verifying that it is complete (or correct) at the end, to shifting that to the individual steps. Lastly, we introduced a framework for using AI for incremental value that builds upon itself to bring value to the enterprise, rather than simply looking for desperate projects within the enterprise where we can apply AI.
Benefits of Augmented Reality
- Reduce Mean Time to Repair
- Reduce Number of Service Calls
- Improve First Time Fix Rate
- Lower Scrap and Rework
- Improve New Hire Productivity
- Reduce Time to Author Content
- Improve Safety
These benefits have a tangible impact to customers, in regards to shareholder value, revenue growth, operating margin and asset efficiency.
Smart, Connected Solutions
A smart, connected machine combines mechanical and electrical components, smart components, such as sensors, microprocessors, data storage, and controls software, and connectivity components like ports, antennae, protocols, and networks. They are designed to:
- capture and expose more production data
- result in more autonomous processes
- be simpler to operate and maintain
- improve overtime by leveraging large data sets
Can you get a good, reliable Wi-Fi signal on the floor?
What devices will you have access to? The devices that best enable AR are relatively expensive so there needs to be a plan around how you manage those, and how you deploy them.
Beyond that, as an OEM, if we want to offer AR experiences to our customers or even implement them internally, we need good 3D data. You also really need to have clear goals about what you want to accomplish with AR.
Operational Considerations
Can you get a good, reliable Wi-Fi signal on the floor?
What devices will you have access to? The devices that best enable AR are relatively expensive so there needs to be a plan around how you manage those, and how you deploy them.
Beyond that, as an OEM, if we want to offer AR experiences to our customers or even implement them internally, we need good 3D data. You also really need to have clear goals about what you want to accomplish with AR.
AR is a great and fascinating tool — but unless we’re solving a specific problem there’s no hard return on that investment. Building an industrial-AR experience is unlike a typical engineering development pipeline most of us are used to.
The Vuforia platform, which we utilize, is architected to make building the experiences more intuitive without a lot of additional manipulation of the data.
Training
- Visualize Learning for Complicated Processes
- Capture Expert Knowledge for Training Purposes
- Train Anytime, Anywhere
Training traditionally was based on operating procedure documentation, which presents more of a learning curve and makes it challenging to find the right information quickly.
Training with augmented reality allows complicated documentation to be visualized with a mixture of videos, text and images, appearing directly in context with the real object.
Expert knowledge can be captured for any task, and projected at any time or place. Training content is always available instantly.
Training traditionally was based on operating procedure documentation, which presents more of a learning curve and makes it challenging to find the right information quickly.
Training with augmented reality allows complicated documentation to be visualized with a mixture of videos, text and images, appearing directly in context with the real object.
Expert knowledge can be captured for any task, and projected at any time or place. Training content is always available instantly.
Work Instructions
- Real Time, In-context Step by Step Visual Guidance
- Improves DIY Capabilities
- Reduces Human Error
- Digital audit trail
AR is making it possible to more quickly train or provide expert guidance to a workforce, and provide them the information they need at the right time and with the correct context. Staff can be guided through how to get a machine back up and running, perform a product line changeover, or alerted to a performance issue using AR technologies.
We see the AR value proposition as delivering significant productivity gains in human labor; improvements on the order of 30-60%, depending on the specific application.
AR is making it possible to more quickly train or provide expert guidance to a workforce, and provide them the information they need at the right time and with the correct context. Staff can be guided through how to get a machine back up and running, perform a product line changeover, or alerted to a performance issue using AR technologies.
We see the AR value proposition as delivering significant productivity gains in human labor; improvements on the order of 30-60%, depending on the specific application.
Inspection Instructions & Compliance Checklists
- Enforce Step by Step Procedures in Order
- Digital Audit Checklists
- Records Data & Pictures for Compliance and Traceability
- Immediate Digital Record Versus Paper-based
Remote Collaboration
- Interactive Visual Collaboration with Experts
- Eliminates Time & Cost of Onsite Service Calls
- Accelerates Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR)
AR for Remote service allows an expert resource to – on demand – interactively guide people through a support task. We can guide the onsite team member on how to execute a task leveraging simple on screen annotations that quickly clarify instructions to the user.
So, if you have a machine that breaks, rather than waiting a day or however long it takes to get a tech out to you, you can hop on a call with that tech and be guided either with a mobile device or with a headset through that repair process.
The value prop for this is unequivocal – the machine gets fixed faster and without travel costs – a better option for both parties.
Real-time Performance Monitoring & Analytics
- Monitor Packaging Compliance and 1st Pass Quality
- Digital Twin Delivers Real-time Performance Data in Physical Context
- Monitored Performance Helps Diagnose Quality or Downtime Exceptions
This will allow staff to view key performance data as a machine is running. It can include more complex data such as OEE metrics, or simple operating sensor data like sealing pressures or temperatures that could be indicating the onset of a component failure.
Combining digital twin technology with AR takes this concept to another level. It allows technicians to “see” how and where internal components are designed to operate without opening the machine up.
The big payoff of collecting all of this IoT operating data is nothing less than the holy grail of true predictive maintenance. We’ll aggregate massive volumes of anonymized IoT data into cloud-based data lakes. That will enable us to benchmark any individual machine’s performance against the entire data set – a useful analysis on its own – but it also means that data can be mined using a combination of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to develop the predictive algorithms that will minimize unplanned machine downtime.
This will allow staff to view key performance data as a machine is running. It can include more complex data such as OEE metrics, or simple operating sensor data like sealing pressures or temperatures that could be indicating the onset of a component failure.
Combining digital twin technology with AR takes this concept to another level. It allows technicians to “see” how and where internal components are designed to operate without opening the machine up.
The big payoff of collecting all of this IoT operating data is nothing less than the holy grail of true predictive maintenance. We’ll aggregate massive volumes of anonymized IoT data into cloud-based data lakes. That will enable us to benchmark any individual machine’s performance against the entire data set – a useful analysis on its own – but it also means that data can be mined using a combination of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to develop the predictive algorithms that will minimize unplanned machine downtime.
More about Augmented Reality
You’ve learned what augmented reality can do for your packaging operation. Here’s some more information on what augmented reality is and where our use of this technology fits into the whole AR spectrum.