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A new generation of advanced digital tools with the potential to radically alter engineering design and manufacturing is here. Robots that can safely work alongside humans in factories are a reality. Computer-aided engineering allows many products to reach production without physical prototypes having been made. How could it be any better?
The answer, which is the basis for what is being championed as the fourth industrial revolution (I4), is that each of these discrete areas could be joined up. That could slash costs and timescales, ensure consistency, and facilitate some exciting new approaches.
With cloud computing and the Internet of Things, companies have an opportunity to collect and exploit data generated in engineering and manufacturing as never before. This data can be used for design, analysis, quality control, improving production efficiencies, and also for sales and marketing. Get I4 right and the benefits extend across the business.
The challenge is firmly on the government’s radar. There is even an All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, chaired by Alan Mak MP. At a recent seminar, Mak talked about visiting companies at the cutting edge of I4. One of the advantages that they are most proud of, he said, is the way they are using cross-functional shared models with virtual reality to extract the benefits of joined-up data.
That theme was endorsed by the government’s High-Value Manufacturing Catapult, which says visualisation and virtual reality enable manufacturers to “visualise their plant, products and processes in ways that were previously out of reach or imagination”.
That phrase “previously out of reach” is key. Until recently, immersive visualisation has stayed beyond most companies owing to the high costs of hardware and implementation. Now, with professional-quality immersive visualisation possible on high-end games-type hardware, using highly-efficient realtime rendering engines such as Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), sophisticated applications can be achieved by most engineering companies.
Within the Unreal Engine Enterprise division, we are seeing the role of our virtual reality and realtime visualisation platform reaching out as part of the first I4 roadmaps. Initial applications are function-specific, such as ergonomic studies, packaging analysis, styling, training or marketing, but what makes this critical to I4 is that the grand plan is for central virtual-reality models to be available across all functions. An example is manufacturing, where CAD-derived virtual-reality models are being used not just for planning, but also for training where capital-intensive hardware is unavailable, before physical machines exist or where the work environment is inaccessible to all but the most skilled. At the extreme of unavailable training settings, Nasa is using a virtual environment built with UE4 to train astronauts to maintain the space station.
My advice to companies planning their I4 journey is to change their mindset from optimising functions to optimising business-wide. That means having an I4 champion who can ensure there are no barriers created by functional boundaries. When planning immersive visualisation, don’t worry about hardware costs; a well-designed platform will run with sufficient efficiency to mitigate those concerns. Then find a capable partner to help with planning and implementation. Within the Enterprise division, one of our focuses is to help companies find the right development partners. Remember that Industry 4.0 is not an IT project. It’s enterprise-wide process improvement and must be planned and managed as such.
To discover how BMW is accelerating design studies by mixing virtual reality with physical touch points, visit: bit.ly/BMWmixedreality