Archive for category Industrial AR
The Augmented How-To Guide
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR, augmented reality on March 9th, 2010
While the narrator voice harkens back to old 50s ‘Technologies of the Future’ videos, the actual content IS actually from the future. As much as I’d love to have this technology in my Toyota plant, I just can’t see making the ‘how-to’ videos for simple tasks as they suggest. This kind of augmented efficiency improvement activity is only suited for highly complex tasks that are performed regularly by amateurs.
So I think the Maker culture would find better use of the technology when it actually becomes available to the masses. Or it could work as a maintenance guide for short-run products that don’t have a large repair station base. This summer I had to replace a pulley belt on a 70 inch zero-turn mower and the explanation sheet left a lot of steps out. It took four neighbors to figure it out.
Here’s the description from VVT (Finland):
Customer specific and individualised products, small batch sizes, as well as increasing product complexity set higher demands for assembly work. Augmented Assembly is a research project at VTT, where AR technology is applied to increase assembly efficiency. In augmenting assembly work, the assembly worker is guided by virtual objects of components and assembly tools, and visual assembly instructions. The worker sees the augmented view through light weight head mounted devices (e.g. data glasses),and sensors provide feedback from the performed operations.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Augmented Reality Year in Review – 2009
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, Industrial AR, augmented reality on December 27th, 2009
The year 2009 has been an important milestone in the development of augmented reality as an important future technology. While markers and marketing campaigns captured the early interest of the year, the bigger story was the porting of augmented reality to the various smartphones in the second half.
But those two generalities aren’t the only thing that happened in 2009 in regards to augmented reality. I’m going to take a look back at the year, month-by-month, to remember how the year unfolded, so we better understand the direction of the future.
January
Back at the dawn of 2009, all the augmented reality news you needed to know was in one place – Games Alfresco. Hope was high and all the pieces seemed to be clicking into place.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases its Lego AR boxes
* By a long shot, Metaio’s release of the augmented reality Lego box was the biggest news of the month. When you can get Angela Merkel and the Govenator to pose with your product, you’re doing well.
Coolest App/Video – iPhone App Helps Solve Rubix Cube
* This app portents of things to come in the future as products like Google Goggles amp up the possibilities of reality-search. Using specific algorithms (agents) for specific tasks, there will be an app for everything you want to do in the future.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Robert Rice
* Though Robert hasn’t delivered on his promise of a Neogence product by mid-year (though the Apple video API has stymied their progress), the rest of the interview is full of great quotes and nuggets about augmented reality.
* Notable quotes from Robert that show how much he understands the industry:
But yes, I’d say that the next 18 months are going to be very interesting with a lot of money being thrown around, new ventures, and plenty of content/applications. I expect most of this will be centered on single user AR experienced through a mobile device with a screen (iPhone, android, etc.). I expect that there will be a significant boost after Vuzix releases some of their wearable *transparent* displays, putting Microvision back into the “has potential but is too quiet” position.
Remember, one of the biggest risks that AR has, is being branded as “novelty”, which means “cool for five minutes but ultimately a waste of time.” I think we have a ways to go before something is truly useful, but as 2009 progresses we should start seeing some effort here. I’d guess 2010 before something really useful comes out…at least something practical.
Now, having said that, I should say that I expect entertainment and games to take the lead (as usual), although there are a few companies really trying to leverage AR and video/graphics compositing for marketing (brochures) and location based methods (kiosks, large screen projections, etc.)
Other notable things that happened in January – The Augmented Times is born and Rouli Nir begins a great year of chronicling the happenings of AR.
An auspicious quote from Rouli:
This blog is about Augmented Reality (AR). It is my firm belief that AR will be the next web revolution (the so called Web 3.0, and forget about that semantic web nonsense). In the next few years, stronger devices and better algorithms will enable us to merge the real world with cyberspace. Using your mobile phone (at first) or head up display (later on) every real object will be augmented and achieve a web presence. Tourism, shopping, advertisement, entertainment and education are only a few areas that will never be the same.
This blog mission is to document this revolution as it happens. We welcome you, and welcome our augmented future.
February
This month is relatively quiet due to it being handicapped by fewer days than the other months.
Biggest News of the Month – Augmented Reality in Flash Now Commercially Available.
* Making the nuts-and-bolts tools of AR available for commercial use is always a good thing, especially when its paired with flash.
Coolest App / Video – “Sixth Sense” MIT Device.
* Patty Maes unleashed this phenomenon on the web early last year and it still gets links and mentions today. While projection based AR is probably not medium that we’ll all eventually use, the video showed tangible use-cases that help the non-initiated understand the embryonic technology.
Best Article / Interview – This comic from the Abstruse Goose sums up a lot about the future of ubiquitous computing (via Augmented Blog.)
Other notable things that happened in February- I started the Future Digital Life blog, which upon reading my early posts, makes me cringe a little. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also, Rouli starts the Weekly Linkfest, the best place to find the round up of AR news each week.
March
In like a lion, out like a lamb. Augmented reality starts to get rolling in March with lots of goodies and promises.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio and Vuzix Team Up to Create AR Goggles.
* While the year has been mostly disappointing regarding HMDs, this was the one tangible piece of progress in the bunch. The video Ori captured at the GDC portends to greater things. While no companies have released products for the Vuzix+ARCam, we’ve recently seen an impressive project from Craig Kapp with his Whisper Deck.
Coolest App / Video – Blair MacIntryre’s GA Tech team – Zombie Attack and Pit Strategy.
* The videos showed what polished AR games can look like.
Best Article / Interview – I’m going for a two-fer on this one because its hard to choose between Ori’s talk at WARM09 and Robert’s Decade of Ubiquity post.
* If you haven’t watched Ori’s talk, I highly recommend it. Even though I’d seen the video, I made a point of hearing him live at ISMAR09 because I think its such a well thought-out call for human-based technology. Robert’s vision is a bit more expansive and covers the whole of augmented reality. I’ll leave you with another Robert quote:
We will break away from the desk, we will throw away our monitors, and our children will laugh at how large our IPhones are. They will struggle with how we ever managed to get work done with “windows” “webpages” and keyboards. They will be unable to fathom the concept of vinyl disks, typewriters, and landlines. But it all starts, and accelerates, during this next decade. Imagine everything that happened in the last decade, and multiply it. You haven’t seen anything yet. The next decade will make the last one pale in comparison.
Other notable things that happened in March – Topps released augmented baseball cards and ISMAR09 begins calling for papers.
April
Biggest News of the Month- Rouli and Ori team up on Games Alfresco to create the AR hub for all AR related news.
* The move allowed Ori to focus more on his company and gave Rouli the helm on the daily AR newscasting. Looking back at the great job that GA has done, I’d say it was a good move.
Coolest App / Video – Marco Tempest’s AR card trick video.
* The video hit the web in April and showed us how AR can change our perception of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Tim O’Reilly talks Web 2.0
* Augmented Times identified the best quote from the video:
RFID is an evolutionary dead-end … semantic web or RFID is things “wearing name-tags”, and web 2.0 is learning to recognize things … We’re getting to that kind of augmented reality, where our computers will have senses that are as good as ours or better … they are going to recognize faces, they are going to recognize objects, they gonna have immediate recall. If you ask me “what’s the UI in five years”, it’s a pair of glasses … I’m gonna have some kind of little heads up display because I’m gonna look at something, I’m gonna walk around at a meeting and it will go “that’s Joe, you met him three years ago”.
Other notable things that happened in April – Georgia Tech fear of heights video (another peak into the future of augmented reality as a perception changer), Rouli’s call for marketers to stop using AR to sell cars, Lester at the Augmented Planet gets his blog started, Nokia point and find is out and a couple of articles about brain-computer interfaces: Honda controls robot and the brain-twitter breakthrough.
May
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases Unifeye design demo.
Coolest App / Video – Useful AR from the US Postal Service.
* Using FLARToolkit, the US postal service shows us that not all AR applications have to be novelity ones.
Best Article / Interview – Tish interviews Ori Inbar about mobile augmented reality.
Ori: Just like with every emerging technology in history, people never bought the technology, they bought the content, the apps, the benefits that came on top of the technology. Whether it was VHS winning over Beta Max, or BluRay winning over HD. It’s always because of more/better content. Look at the video game console war: Xbox, and Nintendo did better than Sony just because they had more and better games. Even Windows was a success thanks to its applications. People bought it for the applications not the OS. The content is the first to drive demand.
Other notable things that happened in May – My post about the Path to Augmented Vision, Programmer Joe talks AR at LOGIN, and 11 Industries to be Reinvented with Augmented Reality.
June
Biggest News of the Month – Layar is online.
* The biggest news of the month by far. Layar was the first big product release that got a buzz bump.
Coolest App / Video – Zugara Social Shopper.
* The video showcased the use of motion capture to help eliminate the burdensome need for keyboards and mouses when you’re using augmented reality. Zugara later put the technique into practice for their Cannonballz and Fashionista products.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Blair MacIntyre
* No surprise here. Tish Shute continues to get great interviews with everyone important in the AR field.
The problem with the mobile phone as a AR device is that problem of awareness. If I have a head mount on and I walk down the street and there is bunch of probably-not-useful-but-potentially-useful information floating by me, that’s a good thing, because I may see something that is useful or makes me think of something else. But if I have to hold up my phone to see if something might be interesting nearby, I will never hold up my phone because at the time there is a high probability that there won’t be anything particularly important there. You might imagine you can get around this by using alerts or something like that, but then you overload whatever alert channel you use.
Other notable things that happened in June- Ori asks us all about our favorite AR games of all time, Noah breaks onto the scene with his Touchless Glove Interface, and Goggle presents their paper on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (which later becomes Goggles).
July
Biggest News of the Month – The AR Consortium Announced.
* While its still unknown if the consortium has accomplished anything through cooperation, the intention of cooperation is a start. Here’s to hoping we’ll see more fruit from this vine in 2010.
Coolest App / Video – AcrossAir Tube Finder.
* At the time it was released we weren’t sure if it was a real product, but eventually we learned the truth and for a time, AcrossAir became the top selling AR app on the iPhone appstore.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Ori Inbar “Reality Reinvented”
Ori:You are so right. It’s multiple elements in the industry that have to come together. You have the technology companies like Imagination and Metaio, then you have content companies like what we’re trying to do; the hardware vendors and the large content providers. Those brands that we’re trying to go after and educate them about the potential of AR. All these pieces need to come together for this market to ignite.
Other notable things that happened in July – James Alliban’s business card goes viral and AR Avatar toys are released at Comic Con.
August
Biggest News of the Month – Yelp Introduces AR Monocle via Easter Egg
Coolest App / Video – Bruce Sterling’s Layar Keynote – At the Dawn of the AR Industry
* Bruce released an AR-infused novel Catyadids in 2009, so it was only natural that Layar asked him to speak about the fledgling industry. The speech is memorable with too many great lines to pick from for quoting here.
Best Article / Interview – Thomas Wrobel’s Proposal for an Open AR Network
* Easily Tish’s best interview because it turned into more than a reflection of past events or hopes for the future. Tish and Thomas have since rallied AR professionals and amateurs to join the AR Wave collaborative effort. They seek to use Wave as the platform for an open AR network and have recently been testing code.
Other notable things that happened in August – AR Strippers!
September
Biggest News of the Month – Vuzix 920Wrap Will Not be See-Through
* The biggest disappointment of the year was the news from Vuzix. Good see-through AR glasses are supposed to release us from the tyranny of the “magic lens”. Hoping 2010 brings better news, but I’m really waiting until 2011.
Coolest App / Video – Augmenting Aerial Maps with Dynamic Information
Best Article / Interview – Gene Becker’s Design Strategies for Magic Lens.
Other notable things that happened in September – No more Gamaray - Death of a Browser, Int13 and Total Immersion getting into bed, and the augmented reality reading list.
October
Biggest News of the Month – News from ISMAR09, News from ISMAR09 #2 and UgoTrade ISMAR09 Coverage.
* I was lucky enough to attend and speak at ISMAR09. The energy of the participants was exceptional and I came away from it more jazzed about AR than I was going in. Hopefully the ISMAR committee will be releasing the videos from the event soon.
Coolest App / Video - 2D sketches become 3D reality.
Best Article / Interview – ISMAR09 HMD Review
* I think I summed up the current state of HMDs for AR pretty well. I’m hoping 2010 brings a suprise for AR HMDs.
Other notable things that happened in October – AR Wave discussion on UgoTrade, Wikitude for the iPhone first look and Giant Hand Torments City
November
Biggest News of the Month – Junaio hits the app store.
Coolest App / Video – Interactive Entertainment Using AR
* The videos about the Disney experiences were similar to what Mark Mine showed us at ISMAR. They really show us how technology can transcend our perceptions of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Planet’s Head-to-head browser test (and part 2)
* Lester broke down the various browsers in this excellent hands-on challenge. Read both parts to find out the winner.
Other notable things that happened in November – Business Week’s Article about: Getting Beyond the Hype and Robert Rice’s reply.
December
Biggest News of the Month – Goggle Googles is released.
* The giant has awoken. Goggles has many implications for Googles ideas on the AR market. This won’t be the last time we’ll hear from them about this technology.
Coolest App / Video – Layer 3.0.
* While Layar has since pulled the app from the app store and had to issue and apology, the version 3.0 still holds lots of promise.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Reality in 2010: Predictions (10 part series)
* A wide swath of the AR blogosphere had the opportunity to participate in the predictions series from Games Alfresco run by Rouli Nir. More interesting, snarky, and possibly-true predictions that you can shake an augmented stick at.
Other notable things that happened in December – AR Wave FAQ on UgoTrade, Enkin acquired by Google, ARDevCamp, Wikitude Teams Up with Lonely Planet, 10 Worse Uses of AR in 2009, and Nexus One News and Implications of AR.
What It All Means
Whew. After reviewing hundreds of articles and videos, I’m sure I’ve missed a number of important happenings from the year 2009. If I have, please make sure to comment and I’ll add it if I have overlooked it.
What does it all mean? That is entirely up to you. The year has brought many advances to augmented reality and the ceiling is sky-high for 2010. There will be surprises, excuses, apologies, releases, re-releases and more. Money will be pumped in, not all where it should go, and progress will be made. We’ll laugh at the videos, smile at our favorite products and complain when it does work as expected. Either way, it will be a year more interesting than the last and I’ll be here to watch it all unfold.
Popularity: 87% [?]
HMD System at Daimler AG
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR, augmented reality, digital singularity on November 12th, 2009
Head-mounted displays are the killer hardware that augmented reality needs to break free from “magic lens” smartphone technology. SAP TV shows us an industrial application concept at a Dailmer AG plant. The part stocker is using an HMD with augmented reality to keep track of the correct parts (their wording makes it sound like this is a concept only.)
The concept screen the worker sees looks like:
If this technology can be realized then plant floors can make big improvements in efficiency and cost by cutting down on expensive errors.
The SiWear research project is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Partners are SAP Research, Daimler AG, teXXmo GmbH; The Mobile Research Center and Neo Business Partners GmbH.
Popularity: 17% [?]
ISMAR09: Manufacturing Discussion
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR, augmented reality on September 10th, 2009
ISMAR09 Sympsium & Expo is right around the corner and I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be not only attending ISMAR09, but I will be presenting during the Manufacturing section on Monday and joining the panel discussion as a representative of Toyota. I’ll be reviewing the possibilities of augmented reality in an industrial setting, including a project that I’m working on with Metaio. Hopefully I can enlighten participants on the constraints and challenges of implementing augmented reality on the factory floor.
I’m announcing this on my blog, so if anyone has any requests for topics during the discussion, I can be sure to bring them up. I was only able to confirm attendance last week, so there’s still plenty of time to update my presentation.
Not only am I excited about presenting, but I’m more excited about getting to meet a lot of the people I’ve interacted with throughout the AR world. I’ll be there from Sunday until Tuesday afternoon, so if you’re going to be there then, I’d love to meet up, chat and maybe, share a drink.
To reach me before or to contact me during the conferance, email me at tom.carpenter (@) tema.toyota.com or twitter to thomaskcarpente. (Yes, the name is missing the ‘r’ since my name was too big for twitter.) I’ll be tweeting updates during the conferance (as well, I use it regularly for posts and other augmented reality related news.)
Popularity: 12% [?]
Around the ARNet
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, Industrial AR, augmented reality on September 8th, 2009
This past month the specter of augmented reality, which in the past had been mostly research papers and speculation, has slowly been turning into real products. With a nice long three day weekend to relax, I thought I’d reflect on the more important happenings of augmented reality.
Augmented Reality Apps
Yelp
The hottest topic for augmented reality apps was the easter egg in the iPhone app Yelp. With three shakes of the iPhone, the Monocle application would be unlocked allowing camera based AR. The impact of this application on the news can be seen in this technorati tag tracker:
Wikitude Drive
Wikitude, the creators of the first reality browser, gave a preview of their augmented reality navigation system for the Android. The navigational system called Wikitude Drive overlays point-to-point directions on the camera view. Some concerns were expressed about safety for the driver, but this application is no different than any navigation system already on the market. And for you iPhone junkies, don’t worry, they’ll be releasing it on that smartphone as well.
And while I’m on Wikitude, they also released Wikitude 3.0, an enhanced version of wikitude.me. Read the article for more details.
Layar 2.0
Competing for the mindshare of future “reality browsers”, Layar has done a good job of getting its product noticed even though it came six months after the Wikitude app. Layar is already onto version 2.1, making improvements to its browser like linking within Layars and sharing screenshots.
Put-A-Spell
Living up to his promise of AR education games for kids, Ori’s company Ogmento brings us a demo of their Put-A-Spell game for young children.
iPhone OS 3.1
Of course, this operating system isn’t an app, but its precursor to an assumed flood of AR apps we’re expecting to see when 3.1 finally becomes live. Expected in September, grumblings of delays have been speculated based on progress in beta. When it finally does drop, expect to see a huge spike in augmented reality articles.
AR Goggles
Lumus
While we’re still a ways from augmented vision, its still nice to track progress of augmented reality goggles. Ori Inbar gives us a peak into the progress of AR goggles in an interview with Zvi Lapidot, CEO of Lumus. While we can’t expect to see a commercial product from Lumus until 2011, mostly due to a lack of VC funding, we can take a look at this demo from them.
Vuzix
While we’re still waiting for the AV920 Wrap to be released this fall, Vuzix has updated their website with a page with an AR Education Group. This group will focus on training services for various industries from medical to military with both off-the-shelf training and custom.
Nokia
At the recent SDForum, research fellow Kari Pulli, talked about Nokia’s take on mobile augmented reality. They believe the future to be, not on handsets, but in AR goggles and are developing a prototype model. The slide show can be seen here.
Interesting Articles
Eight months ago, I could keep up with all the discussion easily. Now many new hats are being thrown into the ring. I’d like to point out my favorite articles from around the ARNet.
Games Alfresco, Ori Inbar – Why People Get Excited About Augmented Reality
Ori gives us a nice rundown of the influence of science fiction on technology and how augmented reality will bring us: x-ray vision, time travel and teleportation.
Ugo Trade, Tish Shute – Everything Everywhere: Thomas Wrobel’s Proposal for an Open Augmented Reality Network
Showing what a great discussion Thomas unleashed, the comment section was nearly as long as the article itself. As a frequent contribuitor on the AR blogs, it was nice to see Thomas outline his vision for the future of augmented reality.
Bruce Sterling – At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry
This video was recorded at the Layar Launch Event. Bruce Sterling, a promenant sci-fi author who helped bring about the cyberpunk movement, gives us a rundown of down-market cheesy AR, who’s leading the AR development race, what to call augmented reality and other ramblings on a fledgling industry. Bruce is also writting regularly about augmented reality and other wired topics on his blog Beyond the Beyond.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb – Augmented Reality: 5 Barriers to a Web That’s Everywhere
The challenges to an augmented reality world are more than the sum of its parts. Marshall breaks down these challenges in five parts: Social vs. Real-Time, UX, Spam and Security, Interoperability and Openness.
Rouli Nir, Augmented Times – Looking for a Modern Day Chaplin
Rouli explains why we need more storytelling and mystery in our AR applications. As he says, “content not technology is the way forward.”
This hits a nice cross-section of my favorite articles from the last month. I also would like to point to the three articles on my own site that got the most traffic: Proposal: Augmented Reality Scale, 10 Things Your AR App Must Have to Succeed, and 10 Franchises That Need Augmented Reality.
I’d like to say that I discussed all the major happenings from the past month, but the volume of AR information coming out lately makes that impossible. For the items I have missed, I suggest checking out the Weekly Linkfest on Games Alfresco/Augmented Times (of course, most of my readers, also read that site, but for those that aren’t yet):
Lastly, if you’re still not on the augmented reality bandwagon, I present to you the most recent augmented reality trends graph on Google trends.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Pachube
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR, augmented reality on July 4th, 2009
In all the hubbub about celebrities dying the last few weeks, I somehow missed that Pachube started a blog about their work.
Okay. I really wasn’t distracted by the celebrities, but we do have a new source for AR information on Pachube’s blog.
Mostly, we’ve been discussing the software side of Augmented Reality. Most of the applications we’ve seen of AR have been in the realm of marketing with the occasional browser like Layar or Nokia’s “Point and Find.” But all these types of AR require human interaction to input the data for it to be visible. Pachube aims to be the connection of the real world to Internet through sensors to help create the Internet of Things.
They recently released a video on their blog showing how real time data can be shown on AR displays.
Though I would have to convince our draconian IS department at Toyota to allow us the newer smartphones instead of our Blackberrys to make this work, I’d would find a lot of use for in the plant. Often we’re forced to use expensive monitors on our casting machines to display data. And if you want to change that data to a different format, forget it, because its extremely hard to change. Using Pachube style interfaces with a smartphone, it’d be simple to walk by a machine or production line, point my camera at it (preferably using GPS+compass rather than markers) and get stats instantly.
I also see Pachube type sensors allowing for lots of other interesting applications. I had talked about some of them a few months back in a few posts called Machines That Know, Good Things and Bad Things. Now I was mostly talking about using cameras with advanced object recognition, but sensors can work in similar applications.
Overall, happy to see Pachube starting a blog and I’m looking forward to regular updates on their endevours.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Immersion’s Cubtile 3D Multitouch Device
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR on May 17th, 2009
The following video from Immersion R&D shows the manipulation of a 3D object using their Cubtile device. I’m not particularly keen on the cube because it seems more like a prop out of a bad science fiction movie rather than a real interface device. I really couldn’t imagine having one of those in my house or at work.
However, the manipulation of the 3D object shows off nice usage of AR in a hologram sort of way. The interesting part of the video comes at 1:08 when she pulls the object out of the cube.
Using a haptic or air-touch system, 3D object manipulation could be useful for designers that need to see all views of an object. But they will also need a way to select individual surfaces, lines or points to make real changes.
Having watched many of my engineers or techs manipulate 3D objects, I can say they spend a lot of time rotating objects around to get the proper view. Using AR glasses with a freeform control that feels natural (not the cube) in their resident 3D program (design, manufacturing, etc), they could improve their development time by a significant amount to make it worth the additional cost of the AR program.
Unfortunately, this means unless a universal AR viewer can be applied to any 3D program, each product developer will have to incorporate AR into their product. We use a wide variety of programs at our one facility: MasterCam, CamTool, Pro/E Wildfire, CADLite, etc., so the cost could skyrocket quickly, making any benefits cost prohibitive.
Popularity: 8% [?]
AR for Industry
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR on April 14th, 2009
Today I had a nice phone conferance with Thomas and Jan from Metaio. Jan is the author of the Augmented Reality Blog. Jan had contacted me after reading my writeup about the use of AR in manufacturing based on a Microsoft video. Thomas is one of their designers and has experience with automotive manufacturing. And I’m looking for applications of AR to improve production at my Toyota casting plant.
The basics of our discussion was how to apply AR concepts to a manufacturing enviroment. The advantage I see for AR in a production enviroment is it brings complex levels of information to a real time enviroment. Many of the challenges of running a factory is getting the right information to the right people to make the right decisions. Every day people must make complex decisions, often with limited information, to perform their job. We apply many systems to these operations to ensure we’re producing a quality product at a good price, but often times we waste efforts because everyone doesn’t have the information they need at the moment they need it.
The combination of real time information in a production enviroment can reduce waste and improve quality if done correctly. One example I can illustrate this example is with die repair. We use steel dies for creating our castings and the dimensions of these dies need to be held tight tolerances of less than 0.20mm. This means we must constantly repair our dies because of wear from the aluminum (aluminum is corrosive to steel).
When we have to repair our die, we first have to weld it, then we machine it back to the required dimensions and then we check the quality. If we make a mistake, we have to go back to the beginning and start over. A common mistake is not putting enough weld material down, so when the weld is machined back to standard, gaps are created from the missing weld. This picture illustrates the example:
Using AR we can superimpose the correct dimension of the final shape over the worn die, so the welder knows if he’s put enough weld material on the die. This gets the right information to the right person at the right time. Before we had the right information, but we didn’t get it to the right person until much later in the process, so effort was wasted in between.
This is one small example of using AR in a production enviroment. And though we only had a brief discussion today about potential applications, my mind has been a-whirl about other possibilities, so I’m looking forward to working with Thomas and Jan to explore the potentials of this fledgling technology.
Popularity: 9% [?]
More Philosophy for Entrepreneurs
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Industrial AR on April 13th, 2009
Tim Ferriss on his popular Four Hour Work Week blog, had an interested guest post about the practical use of philosophy in business from Ryan Holiday. Ryan focuses on the branch of philosophy called Stoicism. I’m not going to further dissect his excellent analysis and application of the philosophy, but I would like to challenge his assertion that Stoicism is the only philosophy that has practical applications (I would also point out that Stoicism is similar to the Eastern philosophy of Taoism, best explained in The Tao of Pooh.)
I would like to discuss the philosophies of Socrates in relation to Toyota.
It’s no secret that one of the keys to Toyota’s success is its Toyota Production System. In the United States, the Toyota Production System (TPS) tends to be dumbed down into lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is akin to taking a martial arts class so you can beat up the guy down the street because he looked at your sister. It gets you quick satisfaction, but doesn’t help grow you as a person.
The TPS I want to talk about is rooted in The Toyota Way, which is a guiding philosophy of the company. The aspects of the The Toyota Way I would like to talk about are the concepts of 5-Whys and the open mind. The concept of 5-Why is that when presented with a problem, keeping asking the question “Why” until the true root cause is found. Often times, the superior will ask his subordinate these questions when the superior feels that the subordinate hasn’t driven down to the real root cause. This method is essentially, the Socratic Method.
It is an important tool of any business because often times we’re busy solving the symptom of the problem and not the true root cause. As an entrepreneur it can be even more important, because you don’t want to be bogged down making every decision for your employees. By asking them questions, and letting them arrive at the correct conclusion (with proper feedback and positive encouragement), you can solve the problem and empower them. As Tim states numerous times in 4HWW, you want to eliminate yourself from the process.
The second, and most important philosophy that is similar between Toyota and Socrates, is the concept of the open mind or in the words of Socrates “I know that I know nothing“. This concept most manifests itself during formal individual or group problem solving activities. Leaders of a Jishuken activity (translates to “self-study”) are chosen by their willingness to have an open mind.
The reason for emphasis placed on the open mind is a student who comes in with a predisposed mind will not succeed because they will be trapped by the limits of their knowledge. One first has to admit that you know nothing (in a relative sense, we’re not asking to forget everything!) before you can truly approach the problem. The open mind is sometimes developed through exercises such as an Ohno Circle or impossible tasks that force the student to look at things in new ways.
I have found that the more knowledgeable members of Toyota are the most willing to say that they “do not know.” I have heard Plant Managers and Managing Officers admit their not knowing. They did not feel the need to “seem to know”, but were perfectly calm with their ignorance. Then in doing so, they would ask many questions that would both inform the answerer and themselves.
One of the highest levels of TPS thinking comes from the OMDD group within Toyota. Students are put through rigorous training for two years and then are expected to return to their group and level up the thinking of those around them. The most important trait that an OMDD candidate is expected to have is an open mind.
While I do not know if the Toyoda family had read Socrates in their development of The Toyota Way, I am certain that if they didn’t; they arrived by the same willingness to examine everything with a critical eye, most importantly, themselves.
“I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others” — Socrates
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