Impact of IoT integration with Mixed Reality on Manufacturing Operations

Abstract

Many manufacturing and engineering companies worldwide face many problems such asincreased cost of production and operations, frequent machined and equipment breakdown, poorproduct quality, and inefficiencies in the production processes. Furthermore, since both MR/ ARheadsets and IoT Systems are working in silos, engineering/operations managers in manufacturingcompanies cannot fully harness its true capabilities. These problems occur because of a lack ofintegration of mixed reality tools and IoT systems such as control systems, Scada, and industrialautomation systems. Both mixed reality and IoT systems have different communication protocols, sointegration is a challenge. However, currently, engineering and operations leadership are usingvarious dashboard/reporting tools that fetch information from both systems separately, limiting thecapabilities of these executives in terms of key decision making; that is something that can beovercome with the system integration. Therefore, this study aims to understand the impact of IoTintegration with mixed reality on manufacturing operations. Once the integration is achieved, it willhelp the manufacturing companies overcome problems such as; energy inefficiency, high cost of theproduct, and poor maintenance of resources. The study used both semi-structured interviews anddescriptive questionnaires to collect data.