Powered by FIWARE: Sentio - VISTRA (Internet of Things,Additive Manufacturing)

VISTRA offers a unique approach to resolving the major barriers preventing virtual operator training and support from reaching its potential in the manufacturing sector.

VISTRA offers a unique approach to resolving the major barriers preventing virtual operator training and support from reaching its potential in the manufacturing sector. The key innovation is to generate the content directly from the manufacturing PLM system of the enterprise. Over the last decade, many companies have invested in digitization initiatives including representing the manufacturing and service processes in the digital domain using solutions such as Siemens Teamcenter, Dassault 3DExperience, and PTC Windchill.

The VISTRA solution offers the capability to import data from these systems to an automation engine thatis capable to build ready-for-use simulation components of these manufacturing and service processes which can be served up to a range of applications and interfaces which present the simulation to consumers according to their specific use case. In the described architecture this simulation data derived from the PLM system is called the ‘Enhanced Digital Twin’ (EDT) and includes data such as geometry assemblies, technical procedures and enhancements such as automatically-generated animations, critical knowledge components, and more. The EDT is stored in the VISTRA backed application VISTRA Management System (VMS) and is made available to client applications as a ‘simulation flow’ of 3d components.

Following this automation approach solves the major barriers described in the previous section:

• Cost of content production: creating and deploying simulation content requires no particular technical skillset, and relies on CPU/GPU-time rather than human hours, speeding up the production time by several orders of magnitude.
• Easy content maintenance: as the manufacturing engineering and service specialists revise processes the updated simulation can be generated in just minutes. Furthermore, there is no vendor reliance to manage the updating process and deliver the results in a timely fashion.
• Data security: as a tool used inside the enterprise the most sensitive data never needs to leave the organizations’ corporate network.

In addition, the data can be used to support multiple use cases, creating a significant multiplier effect.

Manufacturing companies have long been aware of the potential for virtual training to contribute to operator training and technician support systems, but the expected impact has never been reached, primarily due to the following factors:

• Cost of content production: building the simulation training by a manual process is technically complex and time-consuming, hence the cost of bespoke solutions is high and in many cases cannot meet the required RoI.
• Impractical content maintenance: in many manufacturing companies the assembly process is constantly updated to achieve more efficient production, as often as multiple times in a single day during ramp-up phases. Changes to assembly processes also impact service and installation procedures, which are further complicated by being branched workflows with context-sensitive decision making. It is impossible to maintain the bespoke content in a relevant state when the updating process is time consuming and relies on an external resource to create the changes and return them to the customer.
• Data security: data relating to geometry, manufacturing, and service processes are amongst the most sensitive information held by OEMs. The exchange of this information with external vendors is both unwieldy and represents a significant security risk.

Furthermore, most manufacturing companies face a complexity challenge, with product variants and customer options creating highly diverse product portfolios. Such complexity further increases the pressure to prepare the operators and technicians correctly as the number of operations expected to be performed by the operators increases dramatically, while in many cases they will only be performed infrequently, both of which contribute to many challenges in relation to quality.