SAP untethered in Manufacturing with Business Glasses
Augmented Reality (AR) technology enhances our perceptions and improves the user experience in a revolutionary way. Our challenge is to transfer this technology to the manufacturing world. What if you could see animated instructions upon the reality and interact with them instead of using clipboards or going to a kiosk to enter data?
SAP and Vuzix are piloting an AR hands-free solution built for industrial applications while leveraging existing SAP investments. Enterprise information is visible right before the worker’s eyes while allowing the worker to stay focused on their work and environment. With data coming in real-time from machine-to-machine sensors and SAP systems, workers can respond quickly with unmatched situation awareness such as knowing what and where to pick inventory, receiving alerts and instruction to handle maintenance and getting safety messages to avoid accidents from a blind spot. These are just a few use cases where warehouse management, assembly, field installation, testing, machine tooling and repair operations represent a dazzling opportunity for the implementation of AR tools.
Our AR framework can create a smooth combination of real and virtual world, usable by experienceless workers. The joint AR solution is ideal for complex work as well as simple and repetitive work with high compliance requirements. Additionally, the goal of the partnership is to provide AR technologies to streamline processes, reduce mistakes, save time, and make it easier, faster and more user-friendly.
Additionally, we have only been working with Vuzix for three weeks now, which is a testament to the scalability of our apps and the capability of their hardware.
When you come to SAPPHIRE NOW Mobile Campus EAM and Field Service expert table, you will see a mock-up demo of warehouse picking via configuration of standard SAP solutions. A supporting video is also available that can be shared for future reference that illustrates better inventory and maintenance management with AR.
Related mobile SAP products include SAP Inventory Manager, SAP Work Manager, SAP CRM Service Manager, SAP Rounds Manager and SAP Machine-to-Machine Platform.
Great movie. Giving the impression how AR can benefit process optimisation in logistics. However, the impression is made here that this is a real life demo solution. Looking at the glasses construction, it can provide an overlay display on a small part (the side) of the users view angle. But the "users view" suggests a full screen AR overlay. Therefore, I 'm afraid that this is a very professional mock-up.
Anyway, great compliments for the vision and production of the film.
Please have also a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_4KedhWPc4
Here we show a lab-solution we demo-ed ad the Dutch SAP Usergroup conference and visitors clould experience it themselves. It's no mock-up.
Now we are porting the glasses to a mobile device and are changing from visual identification (with markers on pick-locations) to a positioning algorithm with the built-in accelerometers.
We share SAP's vision that AR can provide great benefits in many operational processes.
Léon van den Bogaert
leon.van.den.bogaert@ctac.nl
Good one.
Really great movie. But this it is for sure a concept demonstration, because there are some inconsistencies. For example, the supposed AR information leads the worker into Aisle 17. The worker, however, drives into Aisle 18/19 and makes his pick from Aisle 19.
I think there are still a few obstacles to overcome (regarding the tracking technolgy, for example)