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Mercedes-Benz mentioned it can create digital twins for its real-life factories as a part of a partnership with Nvidia to make manufacturing extra environment friendly.
Utilizing Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, the automobile maker will create digital, metaverse-like representations of its automobile factories earlier than it builds them in actual life. Such “digital twins” can save on prices, allow firms to check concepts after which revise them, and accumulate real-life knowledge that may inform future designs, mentioned Jörg Burzer, member of the board of the Mercedes-Benz Group, in a press briefing.
Nvidia has been speaking up the Omniverse as a sort of onramp for the metaverse for years, and it’s selling Common Scene Description (USD) — initially created at Pixar — as an open metaverse customary for sharing 3D recordsdata throughout totally different firms and industries.
Whereas the metaverse has stalled a bit on the buyer facet (Meta continues to be making an attempt to get us into digital actuality video games and work environments with its VR headsets), the enterprise metaverse for engineers is flourishing.
Mercedes-Benz mentioned it can use digital twins — with assist from Omniverse and USD — for manufacturing functions to design, collaborate, plan and function manufacturing and meeting services.
Mercedes-Benz’s new manufacturing strategies will deliver its next-generation car portfolio into its manufacturing services working in Rastatt, Germany; Kecskemét, Hungary; and Beijing, China — and supply a blueprint for its greater than 30 factories worldwide.
This “digital first” method enhances effectivity, avoids defects and saves time, marking a step-change within the flexibility, resilience and intelligence of the Mercedes-Benz MO360 manufacturing system, the businesses mentioned.
The digital twin in manufacturing helps guarantee Mercedes-Benz meeting traces will be retooled, configured and optimized in bodily correct simulations first. The brand new meeting traces within the Kecskemét plant will allow manufacturing of autos primarily based on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Structure which might be developed nearly utilizing digital twins in Omniverse.
By leveraging Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can work together immediately with its suppliers, lowering coordination processes by 50%. Utilizing a digital twin in manufacturing doubles the velocity for changing or setting up an meeting corridor, whereas bettering the standard of the processes, in keeping with the automaker.
“Utilizing Nvidia Omniverse and AI, Mercedes-Benz is constructing a related, digital-first method to optimize its manufacturing processes, finally lowering building time and manufacturing prices,” mentioned Rev Lebaredian, vice chairman of Omniverse and simulation know-how at Nvidia, in a digital press occasion at the moment.
As well as, the introduction of AI opens up new areas of vitality and price financial savings. The Rastatt plant is getting used to pioneer digital manufacturing within the paint store. Mercedes-Benz used AI to observe related sub-processes within the pilot testing, which led to vitality financial savings of 20%.
Supporting new software program techniques
Subsequent-generation Mercedes-Benz autos will characteristic its new working system “MB.OS,” which will likely be customary throughout its complete car portfolio and ship premium software program capabilities and experiences throughout all car domains.
Mercedes-Benz has partnered with Nvidia to develop software-defined autos. Its fleets will likely be constructed on Nvidia Drive Orin and Drive software program, with clever driving capabilities examined and validated within the Nvidia Drive Sim platform, which can also be constructed on Omniverse.
The automaker’s MO360 manufacturing system will allow it to supply electrical, hybrid and gasoline fashions on the identical manufacturing traces and to scale the manufacturing of electrical autos. The implementation of MB.OS in manufacturing will enable its automobiles to roll off meeting traces with the most recent variations of auto software program.
“Mercedes-Benz is initiating a brand new period of automotive manufacturing because of the combination of synthetic intelligence, MB.OS and the digital twin primarily based on Nvidia Omniverse into the MO360 ecosystem,” mentioned Burzer. “With our new ‘Digital First’ method, we unlock effectivity potential even earlier than the launch of our MMA fashions in our world manufacturing community and may speed up the ramp-up considerably.”
Versatile factories of the long run
Avoiding expensive manufacturing manufacturing shutdowns is crucial. Operating simulations in Nvidia Omniverse allows manufacturing unit planners to optimize manufacturing unit ground and manufacturing line layouts for provide routes, and manufacturing traces will be validated with out having to disrupt manufacturing.
This digital method additionally allows environment friendly design of recent traces and alter administration for present traces whereas lowering downtime and serving to enhance product high quality. For the world’s automakers, a lot is at stake throughout the whole software program improvement stack, from chip to cloud.
Omniverse collaboration for efficiencies
The Kecskemét plant is the primary with a full digital twin of the whole manufacturing unit. This digital space allows improvement on the coronary heart of meeting, between its tech and trim traces. And plans are for the brand new Kecskemét manufacturing unit corridor to launch into full manufacturing.
Collaboration in Omniverse has enabled plant suppliers and planners to work together with one another interactively within the digital setting, in order that structure choices and automation modifications will be included and validated in actual time. This accelerates how shortly new manufacturing traces can attain most capability and reduces the danger of re-work or stoppages.
Digital collaboration with digital twins can speed up planning and implementation of initiatives by weeks, in addition to translate to vital price financial savings for launching new manufacturing traces.
The transfer is a part of a broader effort by Mercedes-Benz to undertake AI, digital twins, and a manufacturing makeover, mentioned Burzer, in a press briefing. 4 years in the past, the corporate launched its versatile digital manufacturing ecosystem, utilizing real-time knowledge and networking with 30 vegetation world wide. It’s a part of an effort to supply electrical, hybrid and combustion automobile fashions on one meeting line to fulfill demand.
“We’ve launched the digital twin in manufacturing,” Burzer mentioned. “The digital twin permits us to retool and ramp up manufacturing of the brand new MO360 platform in our factories proper across the nook” in Germany, Hungary and China. The corporate designed a digital manufacturing unit in Russia, nevertheless it is not going to proceed with that and as an alternative will use it because the blueprint for its world manufacturing community.
“As well as, the manufacturing of synthetic intelligence opens up new prospects and alternatives for vitality and price financial savings,” mentioned Burzer.
That can assist the corporate meet its sustainability objectives. It’s including digital manufacturing to its paint store, and AI helps yield vitality effectivity positive aspects of 20% or extra within the portray course of.
Lebaredian mentioned, “At Nvidia, our soul is accelerated computing. The toughest issues in computing all the time come right down to simulation of the actual world.”
Nvidia’s chips are devoted to simulating the character of worlds in design, structure, manufacturing, and video video games. And now they’re getting used to simulate factories utilizing digital twins, in addition to intelligence itself, with AI.
“The imaginative and prescient is that the bodily actuality turns into the illustration of the digital, relatively than the digital being a illustration of the fact,” Burzer mentioned.
To design the twins, the businesses take a look at the manufacturing course of from finish to finish. It really works out one of the best ways to configure a manufacturing unit utilizing digital objects meant to simulate issues in the actual world. And it opens the digital twins to companions who can present tools, robots and different actual merchandise that can go into the factories in order that the plans will work with what they make.
“They don’t even have to bodily go to the situation to take measurements,” Burzer mentioned. “They will try this within the digital world. That results in a lot quicker iterations, to a a lot shorter ramp up time. In actual fact, we assume that the coordination effort will be lowered by 50%. And to underline what we’ve heard from Jorgen already, this isn’t nearly geometry, and {hardware}. It does embody the software program options, the software program design, all of the performance that we discover within the tools, so you are able to do testing of a complete meeting line, together with the software program controls, digitally.”
That pays off as you don’t need to wreck issues in actual life as you’re employed out the kinks. And as extra firms create their very own digital twins, a wider community of belongings can turn into accessible in order that companions can share the simulations and the information with one another for mutual profit. Ultimately, I suppose that’s how we’ll get our enterprise or industrial metaverse.
“As soon as we are able to combination this world, Omniverse then offers a framework to construct a simulator that may scale on our most superior computer systems,” Lebaredian mentioned. “In order that now we have a chance to show the actual world right into a software program drawback. By taking the entire issues which might be in the actual world which might be constructed from atoms, and turning them right into a digital illustration, we now have the chance to iterate on our designs, and to evolve our techniques which might be primarily based in the actual world by doing experiments contained in the software program world. That is essentially what Omniverse is offering.”
Whereas it’s utilizing the general system to observe high quality, the corporate is just not utilizing the digital twin system for supervision of employees, Burzer mentioned. The corporate makes use of Nvidia {hardware} and different software program on premises in its knowledge middle in Stuttgart, Germany. However it’s within the strategy of transferring the digital twins to the cloud. The primary activity is getting the digital twin completed, then you may share it out with different areas. The corporate believes it has been capable of increase the productiveness of its workers via the digital twins. In the meantime, it has been cautious about assembly privateness necessities.
“I believe this is among the most vital matters — democratization of information,” Burzer mentioned. “Additionally, with this synthetic intelligence, what you are able to do is you may allow every colleague working on the line, staff members, to have entry to knowledge.”
The digital twins don’t have anything to do with workforce optimization, or lowering the variety of jobs, Burzer mentioned.
“It’s a very totally different scope,” he mentioned. “It’s about high quality and effectivity. It’s about getting the waste out of the system.”
If one thing goes fallacious, it doesn’t take days for folks to determine it out. It might probably occur way more shortly with digital twins and actual factories with sensors, because of transparency.
Whereas digital twins allow factories to be designed in cookie-cutter method, it’s not that straightforward in actual life, as there are totally different laws in several nations the place modifications will likely be mandated.