Industrial Metaverse

Collaborative engineering application

In close cooperation with the car manufacturer Audi and VW, inpro has developed an Industrial Metaverse application that virtualizes supporting processes in series production. Thanks to the Virtual Container Showroom system, physical prototype sampling of special load carriers can now be largely dispensed with.

The challenge

Many operating resources, including special containers used in logistics, are required in the body store. Due to their relatively small quantities and their individual design, these containers have a high planning and manufacturing effort. This effort has to be mastered again with each new vehicle generation. In order to be able to dispense with physical prototypes, the development, testing and acceptance of these special containers should be virtualized.

The implementation

Unity, a proven platform for real-time interactive 3D applications in industry, was chosen as the development platform for the Virtual Container Showroom. The application is based on existing design data of components and equipment in the industrial ISO graphics format JT. This allows 3D data to be exchanged seamlessly and without delay between different CAD and product lifecycle management (PLM) applications that support this data standard. Low-cost consumer virtual reality terminals were used for user interaction with the Virtual Container Showroom.

The result

The Virtual Container Showroom enables cross-team development and acceptance of containers, which takes place in parallel and similar to virtual vehicle and component development. Users can virtually and interactively perform important steps up to the production release of the new container type in the Industrial Metaverse. Due to the savings achieved in effective collaboration between OEMs, suppliers, and service providers, as well as the ease of implementation without a great deal of training, the Virtual Container Showroom 2021 received the elogistics Award from AKJ Automotive and Volkswagen’s internal Best Practice Award.

Experience the Industrial Metaverse live in action

The advantages

Reduction of travel costs

Reduction of iteration loops

Reduction of physical prototypes

Faster and earlier results

Checking of component accessibility by workers

Checking potential risks of damaging components

What our customers say

“The Virtual Container Showroom developed together with inpro offers the possibility of realistic collaboration on digital models regardless of location. The agile collaboration with inpro was excellent throughout the entire project.”

Sebastian Galster, Data Analytics & Digital Technologies | AUDI AG

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