Planning for XR in 2021 – It’s all about the use case

The use of Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) or Virtual Reality (VR) (collectively known as Extended Reality (XR)) has started to see a steady rate of growth and adoption throughout manufacturing and engineering industries.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated it further, with many workers needing to be able to work remotely.

Author: Katharine Edmonds

Many organisations are now looking into ways to try and keep things ‘business as usual’, whilst in different locations. XR devices, and their remote collaboration capabilities offer a solution, enabling workers to continue to collaborate virtually, and in context, with their 3D CAD data with their colleagues, from their separate locations.

With remote working set to continue in 2021, is this the year you should consider XR? And how do you start?

You’ll still need a device…

The AR/VR market has been driven over the last 5 years by a raft of new headsets and mobile devices- many from familiar names like Apple, Facebook, HTC, Google, Microsoft and Samsung- along with dozens of start-ups.

Other than an expectation that Apple will release an MR headset sometime in the next 12 -24 months, there is no expected “breakthrough”, or major change to the technologies, just a lot of incremental improvement to what already exists.

…but it’s the use case that’s key.

The result is that in 2021 businesses will be moving away from focusing on the technology and devices, to a phase of planning how best to deploy, and achieve a financial return from, investments in XR.

Companies are now assembling teams to study how XR technologies can be applied to the process of designing and manufacturing products.

To make XR meaningful for a business, there’s got to be a relevant use case. Without a strong use case, there will not be any traction. This really means it has to be led by end user departments. That said, those departments may need help and support, and so IT or innovation groups who are often looking at XR as a technology may also need to be involved.

Creating the business case

The first thing companies should focus on is deciding where they think XR might help within their business, whether it’s design, manufacturing, inspection, training or remote assistance.

When researching XR, don’t fall into the trap of believing everything you see on YouTube, and don’t get hung up on devices. Obviously you’ve got to select a technology and an approach to it, but don’t get concerned that because you’ve gone for a particular device type, it will cause problems later.

Companies need to implement a use case that can run on many different devices, and they need to be device and data neutral i.e. whatever data they create, it needs to be compatible for the next generation of devices.

It’s also important to factor in how you are planning on getting your 3D CAD data into the devices. You don’t want to have to manually rework it to make it usable on your chosen device, ideally you just want to be able to simply drag and drop it, Save As from CAD, or drive it from PLM.

Focus on the use case. Because having a good use case will create a good business case, and without a good business case, you’re not going to get budget for the investment that you’re going to need to make.

Start small

Don’t try and boil the ocean. Choose a use case, break it down into small elements, and then go out and prove how it will benefit your business. If you choose a practical use case, choose elements of that which can be delivered today and will show improvement to the business. If you try to be too broad in your approach the chances are you won’t get there.

Don’t get left behind

Today, some organisations have already adopted this technology and use it every day – they rely on it to perform at a higher level. What started as an idea is now being used by teams globally; growth and adoption is still accelerating as more people are exposed to the benefits it brings.

Now is the time to start making some decisions around your engineering and manufacturing processes and the technology that you could be using, to guarantee that your teams will still be able to collaborate on important team activities that would usually have to be carried out in person.

Theorem-XR

Theorem provides products for engineering and manufacturing companies to improve their design, engineering and manufacturing processes by utilising their CAD and PLM assets in innovative Augmented, Virtual, and as a Microsoft Mixed Reality Partner, HoloLens experiences- our Theorem-XR suite.

Theorem-XR provides a fully automated process enabling you to quickly and easily use your existing 3D CAD data in XR to address a number of different use cases, including Design Review, Factory Layout, Training, Work Instructions, Visualization and the Visual Digital Twin.

The experiences work collaboratively, enabling remote teams and home-based staff to work in an immersive environment, and consume their 3D CAD data in context and at full scale. This helps close the cognitive gap that occurs when 3D models are viewed on 2D screens, closing the gap between CAD and the physical product.

About Author

Katharine is currently Theorem Solutions’ Marketing Communications Executive, and has been with Theorem for the past 6 years. Katharine writes content for all of Theorem’s marketing platforms, on a range of subjects related to Theorem’s core Translate, Publish and Theorem-XR product ranges and their applications within Engineering and Manufacturing.

Tags: Industry Predictions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 at 05:55. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.