The number one challenge within the industrial machinery industry
Recently, the industrial machinery market has been facing a critical issue – a shortage of engineers. How can the market reconcile this challenge?
The industrial machinery market’s issue, a shortage of engineers, can truly be described as a shortage of skilled labor. As experienced workers retire, the influx of younger professionals is not keeping pace with the growing demand, making it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to fill critical roles. This gap is poised to widen further with the rise of Generation Alpha, today’s youngest demographic, who are projected to be smaller in size and more digitally native, with less interest in traditional industrial careers. It is estimated that 46 million individuals make up Generation Alpha within the United States, a stark contrast from the 68 million comprising Generation Z and the 72 million comprising Millennials within the United States (source: US Population Projections: 2017-2060, from the US Census Bureau).
One solution to move the industrial machinery industry forward
This workforce shift is pushing the industry to rethink how it addresses this projected shortfall in human resources. One way many manufacturers are considering is by turning to extended reality (XR) technologies, such as augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, to dramatically increase productivity. As XR becomes more affordable and accessible, the potential for a significant productivity increase will enable manufacturers to better cope with the smaller workforce available in the future. Furthermore, XR technologies can be particularly useful in revolutionizing the way engineers’ complete designs.
How industrial design has evolved over time
Traditionally, engineers have relied on 2D monitors and multi-screen setups to navigate complex CAD environments. Engineers initially worked with relatively small screens that were expensive, bulky and cumbersome. This was my (Tim Yerby’s) experience when I served as Director of Engineering at a prior job: When I started, my team of designers were using relatively small, 20” flat screen monitors on outdated computers to complete CAD work, making it difficult to accomplish tasks quickly, since it would take time to review changes, then an even longer time for the computer to render changes.
To improve the efficiency of our processes, I went through the normal corporate IT approval process of requesting new computers and monitors for my team. Three years later, we finally received the new equipment: larger 27” screens with new laptops. The larger screens made it easier to visualize larger areas of the machines increasing productive and the lower relative cost made it easier to justify having at least three screens, making it possible to review different aspects of a design across several screens at once. A desk with several flat screens is very common these days.
While screen real estate has certainly improved over the years, it still presents limitations, especially when working with large-scale assemblies or intricate components. Engineers often waste valuable time zooming, panning, and toggling between views, which can lead to inefficiencies and even design oversights. In a field where precision and speed are paramount, the physical constraints of a screen can bottleneck creativity and productivity. This is where Immersive Engineering, which leverages extended reality technologies, offers a compelling alternative. As I joked with my team back then, by the time we’d finish lobbying for a new piece of technology, we would end up with an Immersive Engineering headset, akin to what gamers use, rather than a traditional computer.
Defining Immersive Engineering
Immersive Engineering leverages extended reality (XR) technologies (such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR)) to create intuitive human-machine interactions. It enables the infinite manipulation of space; offers a virtual, visual workspace; and provides a means for comparing the bill of materials alongside the machine during virtual design reviews and final quality checks. Immersive Engineering is typically conducted when wearing a headset.
Designer using Immersive Engineering capabilities to create a product
Immersive Engineering is set to revolutionize the future of industrial machinery by providing a holistically collaborative workspace, creating an immersive reality all disciplines can use to visualize, understand, analyze and optimize the product design.
The value of Immersive Engineering
- Increased productivity with leaner teams: Immersive environments streamline design and review processes, allowing leaner teams to accomplish more in less time. This is especially valuable in the face of labor shortages and rising workforce costs.
- Faster time to market: By enabling rapid prototyping, virtual testing and real-time collaboration, Immersive Engineering significantly shortens development cycles, getting products to market faster without sacrificing quality.
- Reduced errors and rework: Full-scale, 3D visualizations help teams catch design flaws earlier, before they become costly problems in production. XR also supports better cross-functional understanding, reducing miscommunications that can lead to errors.
- Lower prototyping and commissioning costs: Virtual prototyping replaces many rounds of physical builds, saving time, material and labor. Similarly, immersive environments allow for virtual commissioning of automation systems before installation begins.
- Improved collaboration across teams and locations: Distributed teams can work together in real time within the same virtual space (reviewing, annotating and modifying designs) regardless of where they are in the world.
- Enhanced training and knowledge retention: XR-based training programs provide hands-on experience in a safe, repeatable environment, accelerating onboarding and improving retention, especially important as experienced workers retire.
- Greater innovation and competitive advantage: Immersive Engineering unlocks new ways to conceptualize, test, and iterate on complex machinery, driving innovation and giving early adopters a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.
- Improved assembly and field service technician capability: Immersive Engineering can be extended to training shop floor assembly technicians as well as the field service technicians using both virtual reality as well as augmented reality, where the technician can see the actual machine as well as the virtual machine in real time and get assistance from the engineering team in the virtual workspace remotely.
Siemens’ NX Immersive Engineering solution
Immersive Engineering solutions all offer the same basic XR principles. However, the right solution will provide the necessary integrations and functionality pivotal for driving fundamental innovation that leads to outsmarting the competition and capturing valuable market share.
Siemens’ NX Immersive Engineering is that solution. This technology, which is part of Siemens’ NX X CAD product, works within the industrial metaverse by allowing businesses to interact with digital replicas of their physical machinery and environments and collect data before enacting change in real-time. NX Immersive Explorer offers a desktop mode where users can enter the virtual environment without a headset and navigate around in full-screen immersive mode to gain additional insights into their designs.
NX Immersive Engineering, when paired with Sony’s award-winning hardware, is poised to transform the industrial machinery market for the better. It’s a headset designed by engineers, for engineers, and its fully integrated design workflow makes it easy to adopt without any IT complexity.
By adopting this head-turning technology, machine builders can expect to improve enterprise-wide decision-making, enable first-time right engineering, improve sustainability across the value chain, and unlock new business opportunities through improved design collaboration.
So, what are you waiting for?
The time for innovation is now.
About the authors
Tim Yerby serves as the Director of Industrial Machinery Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Tim has over 20 years of experience in engineering, product, and marketing management, with a background spanning multiple industries and disciplines.
Kelvin Juarbe is a Product Engineering Software Marketing Manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software. With over 18 years of experience, Kelvin has helped customers leverage cutting-edge technology to gain a competitive advantage, particularly in relation to CAD solutions.