Weaving Continuity into Enterprise Digital Threads

The journey toward the “Industrial Metaverse” for digitally transformed enterprises is filled with potential wrong turns and turbulence.  As physical processes are displaced by virtual or digital processes, new challenges for manufacturers emerge. Digital substitutions for historical physical processes could miss aspects of the product development process that were beneficial without being necessarily mandated.

Consider for example, the previous use of physical prototypes or mock-ups during product engineering. It is obvious that back then people had to reach, access, and install things to construct the prototype they used in product engineering. Anytime a proposed design could not be built by a human, they would stop to design something that they could build to make a test version.  Therefore, it was unlikely that defined engineering specifications had explicitly required the validation that human operators could feasibly assemble that product in order to prove/disprove a design.

When test pilots flew prototype aircraft, ground crews certainly noticed if components were too difficult to install, access, or replace without it being part of the test specification—necessary changes would be requested and if the product could not be built, the test would not proceed. The risk is that today, in the digital design and testing space, we draw those objects in their final part position. But have we adequately considered how a component arrives at that location, or how to remove it later if, or when, it fails?

This leaves a risk of gaps, or figuratively “skipped stitches”, in an enterprise digital thread.  

This reduced reliance on physical prototyping in modern product development timelines deprives enterprises of practical milestones where they previously discovered that people might have issues building, maintaining, or operating the proposed new products. To address that risk, our subscribers use VR or XR experiences to virtually build and virtually disassemble product designs in fully immersive and physically realistic virtuality.

When in that virtual assembly line or extended reality maintenance hangar, the user in VR is effectively transcending time and space to experience how they interact with the new products in proposed human-performed tasks or processes—human-centric process and product validation.

With ESI IC.IDO, enterprise subscribers take their digital product designs and create immersive experiences for their stakeholders to participate first-hand in the processes that humans would commonly perform in, and around, their new products.

Valuable outcomes, or validations, that emerge from human-centric process reviews include: 

• product packaging and clearances, static & dynamic 
• wiring, cabling, and hose routing and clearances 
• component installation and removal 
• operator visibility, reachability, and accessibility 
• process validation and optimization  
• tooling and equipment validation 
• operator ergonomics and safety 
• workcell and line optimization 

More than just enabling immersive visualization and exploring new product designs in true-to-life scale, IC.IDO aims to involve stakeholders in the processes that people will be expected to interact in with the products.