Volvo Group Delivers Digital Thread Through Lens of Augmented Reality

Volvo Trucks

Global truck manufacturer

In today’s rapidly changing market, customization has become the new normal. This presents new quality assurance challenges as product complexity and unique configurations increase in volume and rate of change.

Volvo’s engines are very sophisticated with 4,500 different engine information variants for just one plant and for 13,000 variants for the full plant for referencing.

Training new operators on the complex inspection procedures takes five weeks, which adds to the overall cost of quality.

Utilizing PTC not only for its leading Vuforia enterprise Augmented Reality suite of capabilities, but also for its end-to-end solution for creating and scaling a digital thread.

Utilizing the ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things platform, engineering updates from Creo engine computer- aided design (CAD) iterations, downstream Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) and manufacturing operations technology

• The single source of truth created by the digital thread will be delivered through the lens of augmented reality, ensuring QA workers can access and view the latest engine configurations and supporting materials in near real time.

• Using a Vuforia augmented reality experience, operators can quickly recall the most up-to-date configurations in 3D to ease the burden of sorting through stacks of paper, creating gains in productivity.

• It previously took Volvo more than a day to update and validate the configuration and QA checklists with new engine iterations across workstations and facilities. With the implementation of a digital thread and augmented reality, this time is reduced to less than an hour.

• With the AR technology, the training of quality operators will be reduced to less than two weeks.