Mercedes-Benz stated it would 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 automotive maker will create digital, metaverse-like representations of its automotive 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 gather real-life knowledge that may inform future designs, stated 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 information throughout completely 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 stated it would use digital twins — with assist from Omniverse and USD — for manufacturing purposes to design, collaborate, plan and function manufacturing and meeting services.

Mercedes-Benz’s new manufacturing strategies will convey its next-generation car portfolio into its manufacturing services working in Rastatt, Germany; Kecskemét, Hungary; and Beijing, China — and provide 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 stated.

The digital twin in manufacturing helps guarantee Mercedes-Benz meeting strains may be retooled, configured and optimized in bodily correct simulations first. The brand new meeting strains within the Kecskemét plant will allow manufacturing of automobiles primarily based on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Structure which are 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 enhancing the standard of the processes, in keeping with the automaker.

“Utilizing Nvidia Omniverse and AI, Mercedes-Benz is constructing a linked, digital-first method to optimize its manufacturing processes, in the end lowering building time and manufacturing prices,” stated Rev Lebaredian, vp of Omniverse and simulation know-how at Nvidia, in a digital press occasion immediately.

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 watch related sub-processes within the pilot testing, which led to vitality financial savings of 20%.

Supporting new software program techniques

Subsequent-generation Mercedes-Benz automobiles will characteristic its new working system “MB.OS,” which might 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 automobiles. Its fleets might 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 strains and to scale the manufacturing of electrical automobiles. The implementation of MB.OS in manufacturing will enable its automobiles to roll off meeting strains with the newest variations of car software program.
“Mercedes-Benz is initiating a brand new period of automotive manufacturing due to the mixing of synthetic intelligence, MB.OS and the digital twin primarily based on Nvidia Omniverse into the MO360 ecosystem,” stated 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 longer term

Avoiding pricey manufacturing manufacturing shutdowns is essential. Working simulations in Nvidia Omniverse permits manufacturing facility planners to optimize manufacturing facility flooring and manufacturing line layouts for provide routes, and manufacturing strains may be validated with out having to disrupt manufacturing.

This digital method additionally permits environment friendly design of recent strains and alter administration for current strains 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 growth stack, from chip to cloud.

Omniverse collaboration for efficiencies

The Kecskemét plant is the primary with a full digital twin of the whole manufacturing facility. This digital space permits growth on the coronary heart of meeting, between its tech and trim strains. And plans are for the brand new Kecskemét manufacturing facility 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 atmosphere, in order that structure choices and automation modifications may be integrated and validated in actual time. This accelerates how shortly new manufacturing strains can attain most capability and reduces the chance 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 value financial savings for launching new manufacturing strains.

The transfer is a part of a broader effort by Mercedes-Benz to undertake AI, digital twins, and a manufacturing makeover, stated 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 around the globe. It’s a part of an effort to supply electrical, hybrid and combustion automotive fashions on one meeting line to fulfill demand.

“We’ve launched the digital twin in manufacturing,” Burzer stated. “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 facility in Russia, but it surely won’t proceed with that and as a substitute 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,” stated 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 features of 20% or extra within the portray course of.

Lebaredian stated, “At Nvidia, our soul is accelerated computing. The toughest issues in computing all the time come all the way 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, slightly than the digital being a illustration of the fact,” Burzer stated.

To design the twins, the businesses have a look at the manufacturing course of from finish to finish. It really works out one of the best ways to configure a manufacturing facility 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 must bodily go to the placement to take measurements,” Burzer stated. “They will do this within the digital world. That results in a lot quicker iterations, to a a lot shorter ramp up time. In reality, we assume that the coordination effort may be lowered by 50%. And to underline what we’ve heard from Jorgen already, this isn’t nearly geometry, and {hardware}. It does embrace 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 whole meeting line, together with the software program controls, digitally.”

That pays off as you don’t must 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 property can develop into accessible in order that companions can share the simulations and the info with one another for mutual profit. Ultimately, I suppose that’s how we’ll get our enterprise or industrial metaverse.

“As soon as we will mixture this world, Omniverse then gives a framework to construct a simulator that may scale on our most superior computer systems,” Lebaredian stated. “In order that we have now a chance to show the actual world right into a software program drawback. By taking all the issues which are in the actual world which are 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 are primarily based in the actual world by doing experiments contained in the software program world. That is basically what Omniverse is offering.”

Whereas it’s utilizing the general system to watch high quality, the corporate just isn’t utilizing the digital twin system for supervision of staff, Burzer stated. 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 process is getting the digital twin performed, then you possibly can share it out with different places. The corporate believes it has been capable of enhance the productiveness of its workers by way of the digital twins. In the meantime, it has been cautious about assembly privateness necessities.

“I believe this is among the most vital subjects — democratization of information,” Burzer stated. “Additionally, with this synthetic intelligence, what you are able to do is you possibly can allow every colleague working on the line, workforce 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 stated.

“It’s a very completely different scope,” he stated. “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 may occur far more shortly with digital twins and actual factories with sensors, due to transparency.

Whereas digital twins allow factories to be designed in cookie-cutter method, it’s not that straightforward in actual life, as there are completely different rules in numerous nations the place modifications might be mandated.