Use case: AR based factory planning

Industry 4.0 has made production lines and factory layouts increasingly dynamic and eventually they will change several times a day. The project focuses on this use case where the design process of planning individual workstations or new production lines need to be optimized.

On the shop floor, the manual working stations are designed using cardboards and plastic tray stacks in a joint workshop by the workers along with planning managers with group dynamic and lean rules.  Following which, the new workstation or production line designing is done using an AR enhanced planning tool that visualizes in 3D the current layout of the Digital Twin, and provides interactive editing capabilities for the planners. Furthermore, the application allows the addition of AR annotations and upload of CAD models, point clouds etc to visualize the plan to its entirety on the shop floor. The real-time update of the factory layout and the respective machinery on the shop floor is a prerequisite in order to support the flexible rearrangement of the production facilities, when a new production batch or a workstation is planned.

Factory planning then no longer is only a separate activity carried out by planners in offices far away from the production – Instead, it can also happen interactively in the field!