Nvidia groups with Mercedes-Benz to design digital twins for real-life factories

Mercedes-Benz stated it is going to create digital twins for its real-life factories as a part of a partnership with Nvidia to make manufacturing extra environment friendly.

Using 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 accumulate 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 form of onramp for the metaverse for years, and it’s selling Universal Scene Description (USD) — initially created at Pixar — as an open metaverse commonplace for sharing 3D recordsdata throughout completely different firms and industries.

While the metaverse has stalled a bit on the patron facet (Meta remains to be attempting to get us into digital actuality video games and work environments with its VR headsets), the enterprise metaverse for engineers is prospering.

Mercedes-Benz stated it is going to use digital twins — with assist from Omniverse and USD — for manufacturing functions to design, collaborate, plan and function manufacturing and meeting amenities.

Mercedes-Benz’s new manufacturing strategies will carry its next-generation automobile portfolio into its manufacturing amenities 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 stated.

The digital twin in manufacturing helps guarantee Mercedes-Benz meeting traces may be retooled, configured and optimized in bodily correct simulations first. The new meeting traces within the Kecskemét plant will allow manufacturing of autos primarily based on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Architecture which can be developed nearly utilizing digital twins in Omniverse.

By leveraging Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can work together straight with its suppliers, decreasing coordination processes by 50%. Using a digital twin in manufacturing doubles the velocity for changing or setting up an meeting corridor, whereas bettering the standard of the processes, based on the automaker.

“Using Nvidia Omniverse and AI, Mercedes-Benz is building a connected, digital-first approach to optimize its manufacturing processes, ultimately reducing construction time and production costs,” stated Rev Lebaredian, vice chairman of Omniverse and simulation expertise at Nvidia, in a digital press occasion at the moment.

In addition, the introduction of AI opens up new areas of vitality and value 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 programs

Next-generation Mercedes-Benz autos will function its new working system “MB.OS,” which will likely be commonplace throughout its complete automobile portfolio and ship premium software program capabilities and experiences throughout all automobile 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 be constructed on Omniverse.

The automaker’s MO360 manufacturing system will allow it to provide electrical, hybrid and fuel fashions on the identical manufacturing traces and to scale the manufacturing of electrical autos. The implementation of MB.OS in manufacturing will permit its vehicles to roll off meeting traces with the newest variations of auto software program.
“Mercedes-Benz is initiating a new era of automotive manufacturing thanks to the integration of artificial intelligence, MB.OS and the digital twin based on Nvidia Omniverse into the MO360 ecosystem,” stated Burzer. “With our new ‘Digital First’ approach, we unlock efficiency potential even before the launch of our MMA models in our global production network and can accelerate the ramp-up significantly.”

Flexible factories of the long run

Avoiding expensive manufacturing manufacturing shutdowns is essential. Running simulations in Nvidia Omniverse permits manufacturing facility planners to optimize manufacturing facility ground and manufacturing line layouts for provide routes, and manufacturing traces may be validated with out having to disrupt manufacturing.

This digital method additionally permits environment friendly design of latest traces and alter administration for present traces whereas decreasing downtime and serving to enhance product high quality. For the world’s automakers, a lot is at stake throughout all the software program improvement stack, from chip to cloud.

Omniverse collaboration for efficiencies

The Kecskemét plant is the primary with a full digital twin of all the manufacturing facility. This digital space permits improvement on the coronary heart of meeting, between its tech and trim traces. 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 setting, in order that format choices and automation adjustments may be integrated and validated in actual time. This accelerates how rapidly new manufacturing traces can attain most capability and reduces the danger of re-work or stoppages.

Virtual collaboration with digital twins can speed up planning and implementation of tasks by weeks, in addition to translate to important 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, stated Burzer, in a press briefing. Four 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 provide electrical, hybrid and combustion automotive fashions on one meeting line to satisfy demand.

“We’ve introduced the digital twin in production,” Burzer stated. “The digital twin allows us to retool and ramp up production of the new MO360 platform in our factories right around the corner” in Germany, Hungary and China. The firm designed a digital manufacturing facility in Russia, however it won’t proceed with that and as a substitute will use it because the blueprint for its world manufacturing community.

“In addition, the production of artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities and opportunities for energy and cost savings,” stated Burzer.

That will assist the corporate meet its sustainability objectives. It is including digital manufacturing to its paint store, and AI helps yield vitality effectivity positive factors of 20% or extra within the portray course of.

Lebaredian stated, “At Nvidia, our soul is accelerated computing. The hardest problems in computing always come down to simulation of the real 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 vision is that the physical reality becomes the representation of the digital, rather than the digital being a representation of the reality,” Burzer stated.

To design the twins, the businesses have a look at the manufacturing course of from finish to finish. It works out the easiest way to configure a manufacturing facility utilizing digital objects meant to simulate issues in the true 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 do not even need to physically visit the location to take measurements,” Burzer stated. “They can do that in the digital world. That leads to much faster iterations, to a much shorter ramp up time. In fact, we assume that the coordination effort can be reduced by 50%. And to underline what we’ve heard from Jorgen already, this is not just about geometry, and hardware. It does include the software features, the software design, all the functionality that we find in the equipment, so you can do testing of an entire assembly line, including the software 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 grow to be obtainable in order that companions can share the simulations and the info with one another for mutual profit. Eventually, I suppose that’s how we’ll get our enterprise or industrial metaverse.

“Once we can aggregate this world, Omniverse then provides a framework to build a simulator that can scale on our most advanced computers,” Lebaredian stated. “So that we have an opportunity to turn the real world into a software problem. By taking all of the things that are in the real world that are built from atoms, and turning them into a digital representation, we now have the opportunity to iterate on our designs, and to evolve our systems that are based in the real world by doing experiments inside the software world. This is fundamentally what Omniverse is providing.”

While it’s utilizing the general system to observe high quality, the corporate isn’t utilizing the digital twin system for supervision of employees, Burzer stated. The firm makes use of Nvidia {hardware} and different software program on premises in its knowledge heart in Stuttgart, Germany. But it’s within the strategy of shifting the digital twins to the cloud. The first process is getting the digital twin performed, then you’ll be able to share it out with different places. The firm believes it has been in a position to enhance the productiveness of its staff by way of the digital twins. Meanwhile, it has been cautious about assembly privateness necessities.

“I think this is one of the most important topics — democratization of data,” Burzer stated. “Also, with this artificial intelligence, what you can do is you can enable each and every colleague working at the line, team members, to have access to data.”

The digital twins don’t have anything to do with workforce optimization, or decreasing the variety of jobs, Burzer stated.

“It’s a completely different scope,” he stated. “It’s about quality and efficiency. 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 can occur far more rapidly with digital twins and actual factories with sensors, due to transparency.

While digital twins allow factories to be designed in cookie-cutter method, it’s not that easy in actual life, as there are completely different laws in numerous international locations the place adjustments will likely be mandated.