ESI : Experience proposed production & service processes first-hand

In my previous posts dedicated to Heavy Machinery & Equipment, I touched on how digitalization can sustain environmental goals, and how Virtual Reality can support successful product integration. Today, I will show you how VR can provide an experiential, immersive experience, that is key to validate assembly, maintenance, and services processes early and with confidence.

Validating new agricultural, construction, mining, or other off-highway commercial vehicles extends beyond requirements tested in deterministic computer simulations or product analyses. It doesn't prove much if a new electric-powered excavator or harvester variant meets performance requirements if that machine cannot be constructed or maintained safely by the people working on them. The processes, methods, and resources needed to produce and maintain products also require validation. Production and service procedures are performed by people, with near-infinite variability in how individuals might do the job; as a result, many find deterministic simulations and computer models fall short of identifying inherent risks in those human-centric processes.

Evaluating the experience of human-centric - human-operated or human-performed - processes of replacing a component from a machine during service is not easily modeled using deterministic computer simulations or analysis solutions. Digital Human Modelling is often an exercise in puppeteering, and resulting analyses are often more an indictment of craftsmanship than of the feasibility of the process for the new products. A scenario modeled and animated as safe might prove unacceptable the first time a real person stands in a real assembly or service environment with the real product to perform the procedure. Even after spending hours or days modeling scenarios to cover a wide population of operators, a real person can recognize immediately if a procedure is practical or comfortable for the human operators when experiencing a new process.

Using conventional simulation to analyze human performed operations can be very time-consuming (a 30-second assembly operation might take a full day to model and animate) or have limited value when considering the infinite ways people might approach a physical task. To this end, using virtual reality to power "experiential" reviews of Human-Centric Processes, like the final assembly of construction equipment on the line, or maintenance of agricultural machines on the farm, gives enterprises a way to allow their teams to EXPERIENCE the Products of Tomorrow, Today.