Analysis and development of augmented reality (AR) technology in the manufacturing industry

Abstract

Rapid social, political and economic changes are continuously redefining market landscapes. Today’s market landscapes are very competitive as the demands and expectations from products and services have drastically increased. This has led to greater importance for manufacturing companies to lower the costs related to production by continuously striving towards operational excellence. One such manufacturing area where companies are heavily investing with the aim of improvement, relates to the maintenance of production assets. Digitalisation tools used within a manufacturing environment that promotes Industry 4.0 ideas can drastically improve maintenance strategies by making them go beyond simply preventing downtime of individual assets. Recent technological trends have shown that the leading technologies that are expected to have the most significant role in the way future maintenance is done include, Machine Learning (ML), and Extended Reality (XR). This research is dedicated to analysing the potential capability of adopting XR based technologies, namely through AR to improve corrective maintenance strategies of automation systems. Through the adoption of the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) process improvement cycle, this research introduces a tailored made AR-based application to improve existing maintenance processes. This AR based solution guides technicians in their work by delivering step by step guidance to technicians in their job. The final developed AR system is one that successfully reduces downtime of machinery by bypassing time-consuming activities. The results obtained by this study show that such approaches can improve the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) rating by as much as 5%. This lays the foundation for future studies in this area. This study is being carried out together with at Methode Electronics Malta, which is this project’s industrial partner.