Simo-Pekka Leino

A High-Level Haptic Interface for Enhanced Interaction within VirtoolsTM

Haptics is the outstanding technology to provide tri-dimensional interaction within Virtual Environments (VE). Nevertheless, many software solutions are not fully prepared to support Haptics. This paper presents a user-friendly implementation of Sensable Phantom haptic interfaces onto the interactive VE authoring platform, Virtools 4.0. Haptics implementation was realized using the Haptic Library (HLAPI) from OpenHaptics toolkit 2.0 which provides highly satisfactory custom forces effects. The integration of Phantom interaction at end-user development fulfils logical VE interactive authoring under Virtools. Haptics implementation was qualitatively assessed in a manual maintenance case, a welding task, as a part of the national Finnish project, VIRVO. Manipulation enhancements provided by the integration of Phantom interaction in Virtools suggest many further improvements for more complicated industrial pilot experiments as a part of the European Commission funded project ManuVAR.

Case Study on Engineering Change Management and Digital Manufacturing

Improved engineering change management (ECM) has been recognized as one of the major gain areas in manufacture. Digital Manufacturing (DM) is proposed as a means for improved ECM. This paper introduces the preliminary findings of a case study in manufacturing industry. The main proposed development targets include: Integrated PLM architecture and processes, parallel product structures, baseline structure for virtual prototypes, richer information model, and re-designed product development process. The results are categorized in the dimensions of internal and external functions, new product development and standard production, corrective changes and betterment, physical and virtual product. The novelty of this paper within PLM research emerges from the nature of business and focused product development processes of the case, because majority of related literature is related to mass production.

PLM Impact Analysis Model – PIA

Our goal was to create a support for better PLM development target identification. A method titled ”PIA – PLM Impact Analysis” was created in order to help recognizing the most value-adding potentials. The method is supported by a MS–Excel based tool. The method was built and developed in workshops interactively with researchers and representatives from companies.

Rock Crusher Upgrade Business from a PLM Perspective

Global trends of ecology and sustainable development, safety awareness, changing legislation, and urbanization, together with the economic situation, force industry to find solutions for extending product lifecycles, while maintaining and improving machine system performance and other properties during the lifecycles. Together with these societal issues, firms are struggling with competitiveness. This chapter introduces the new Use-it-Wisely (UIW) approach to upgrading rock crushers at customer sites. The higher level problem needing to be solved concerned making upgrade delivery projects profitable and more desirable for customers, manufacturing OEMs and suppliers. The main recognized and treated bottlenecks were related to knowing the actual status of the upgrade target, communication and collaboration with stakeholders, verification and validation of upgrade specifications and an efficient information flow between the stakeholders. Augmented reality (AR), Virtual environments (VE), camera based 3D scanning, and cloud based solutions are the selected pieces of technology for solving the bottlenecks. They enable better communication, collaboration and involvement of all stakeholders, including customers, internal stakeholders, suppliers and partners. They also better enable the planning and discussing of service quality activities. Product life-cycle management (PLM) is the framework for developing and managing product related information, processes and collaboration expanding towards product middle-of-life, end-of-life, and service lifecycle management. This study is a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the potential of contributions to business model innovations and game changes for upgrading business.

Role of VR Throughout the Life of Low Volume Products Towards Digital Extended Enterprises

This paper discusses the role of virtual reality from the perspective of PLM, based on several industrial case studies. As a result of the research a virtual reality in PLM utilization model is proposed. The proposed model regards virtual reality value creation and prerequisites from PLM perspective. Utility of the model is discussed from business management point of view.

Digital Tools to Support Knowledge Sharing and Cooperation in High-Investment Product-Services

The manufacturing industry needs to adapt their product-services to meet customer requirements in today’s rapidly changing markets. This paper presents how technologies can support knowledge sharing and collaboration during product-service processes. This work was part of the European Union Use-it-Wisely project and summaries demonstration results from the project. Six cluster cases from different industry sectors (energy, machinery, space, office workplace, vehicles, and shipbuilding) were developing their tools and processes during the project. Based on the demonstration evaluations, it seems that the Use-it-Wisely project has enabled companies to improve their product-services by using interactive collaborative environments and new business models. Participants that took part in the demonstrations felt that the new approach makes users’ work easier, provides competitive advantage, facilitates knowledge sharing and decision making, extends the efficient lifecycle of existing machinery and supports sustainable development.

Characterising the Industrial Context of Engineering Change Management

Engineering changes (EC) and their management (ECM) can be categorized from several points of view. In this paper an EC is mainly considered from the position in lifecycle of the object of change: NPD vs. serial production. The performance aspects of engineering change processes emphasize the balancing of speed of the processes and the communication and assessment of consequent changes. ECM practices are studied by comparing two case companies. The cases indicate ECM is highly related to the organization, history and strategy of a company. The increased efficiency in engineering changes is aspired by streamlined ECM in new product development, while enhanced ECM processes apparently batch ECs for increased overall effectivity. The mutual challenge for the studied companies is that the NPD projects result with a set of change requests for serial production.

Dynamic Behaviour of Human Body During Operation of Mobile Machines

The goal of our research work has been to build up an easy-to-use, computationally feasible virtual simulation model of the human body which could be applied to various studies of the vibration transmission and the human exposure to vibration during mobile machine operation. The proposed human model is a 46 degrees-of-freedom multibody model, in which PD-controllers are used to describe the muscular action in driving situations. In the presented case study, random, real driving situation based excitations are applied on the model. The results of the virtual simulation are compared with measurement data from physical test drive simulator. It is shown, that the conventional PD-controller can predict the human behavior in a reasonable accuracy with smaller amplitude excitation. When the human undergoes larger shock loads, there could be added a delay term in the control law.Copyright