Visualizing a Digital Twin for Operators in High-Mix Low-Volume Manufacturing using Augmented Reality

Abstract

High-mix low-volume manufacturing relies heavily on human assembly is important. To reduce the effects of human mistakes and to limit training time in a high-employment market, companies are looking into ways to let technology support operators to not only guide assembly but also inspection of work. Inline inspection (with digital guidance) can decrease the costs of rework or scrap production. We evaluate a mostly transparent augmented reality overlay of a product’s digital twin to support assembly and inline inspection in a formative within-subjects study with six operators. To isolate interface effects from AI performance, progress tracking and inspection were simulated via a Wizard-of-Oz setup. We discuss the results of the evaluation and present lessons learned.