Mercedes-Benz mentioned it’s going to 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 corporations to check concepts after which revise them, and acquire real-life knowledge that may inform future designs, mentioned 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 normal for sharing 3D recordsdata throughout completely different corporations and industries.

Whereas the metaverse has stalled a bit on the buyer facet (Meta continues 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 mentioned it’s 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 convey its next-generation car portfolio into its manufacturing amenities working in Rastatt, Germany; Kecskemét, Hungary; and Beijing, China — and provide a blueprint for its greater than 30 factories worldwide.

This “digital first” strategy 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 mentioned.

The digital twin in manufacturing helps guarantee Mercedes-Benz meeting traces might be retooled, configured and optimized in bodily correct simulations first. The brand new meeting traces within the Kecskemét plant will allow manufacturing of automobiles based mostly on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Structure which can be developed just about utilizing digital twins in Omniverse.

By leveraging Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can work together instantly with its suppliers, decreasing coordination processes by 50%. Utilizing a digital twin in manufacturing doubles the velocity for changing or establishing an meeting corridor, whereas enhancing the standard of the processes, in response to the automaker.

“Utilizing Nvidia Omniverse and AI, Mercedes-Benz is constructing a related, digital-first strategy to optimize its manufacturing processes, finally decreasing building time and manufacturing prices,” mentioned Rev Lebaredian, vp of Omniverse and simulation know-how at Nvidia, in a digital press occasion in the present day.

As well as, the introduction of AI opens up new areas of power 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 power financial savings of 20%.

Supporting new software program programs

Subsequent-generation Mercedes-Benz automobiles will function its new working system “MB.OS,” which shall be normal 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 shall 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 automobiles. The implementation of MB.OS in manufacturing will permit its automobiles to roll off meeting traces 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 based mostly on Nvidia Omniverse into the MO360 ecosystem,” mentioned Burzer. “With our new ‘Digital First’ strategy, we unlock effectivity potential even earlier than the launch of our MMA fashions in our international manufacturing community and may speed up the ramp-up considerably.”

Versatile factories of the longer term

Avoiding expensive 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 traces might be validated with out having to disrupt manufacturing.

This digital strategy 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 modifications might be included 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.

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 traces.

The transfer is a part of a broader effort by Mercedes-Benz to undertake AI, digital twins, and a manufacturing makeover, mentioned 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 all over the world. It’s a part of an effort to provide electrical, hybrid and combustion automotive fashions on one meeting line to satisfy demand.

“We’ve launched the digital twin in manufacturing,” Burzer mentioned. “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 is not going to proceed with that and as an alternative will use it because the blueprint for its international manufacturing community.

“As well as, the manufacturing of synthetic intelligence opens up new prospects and alternatives for power and price financial savings,” mentioned Burzer.

That may assist the corporate meet its sustainability targets. It’s including digital manufacturing to its paint store, and AI helps yield power effectivity positive factors of 20% or extra within the portray course of.

Lebaredian mentioned, “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 mentioned.

To design the twins, the businesses take a look at the manufacturing course of from finish to finish. It really works out one of the simplest 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 gear, robots and different actual merchandise that may 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 mentioned. “They’ll do this within the digital world. That results in a lot sooner iterations, to a a lot shorter ramp up time. In reality, we assume that the coordination effort might be diminished by 50%. And to underline what we’ve heard from Jorgen already, this isn’t nearly geometry, and {hardware}. It does embody the software program options, the software program design, all of the performance that we discover within the gear, so you are able to do testing of a complete meeting line, together with the software program controls, digitally.”

That pays off as you don’t need to wreck issues in actual life as you’re employed out the kinks. And as extra corporations create their very own digital twins, a wider community of property can turn out to be obtainable in order that companions can share the simulations and the info with one another for mutual profit. Finally, I suppose that’s how we’ll get our enterprise or industrial metaverse.

“As soon as we are able to mixture this world, Omniverse then gives a framework to construct a simulator that may scale on our most superior computer systems,” Lebaredian mentioned. “In order that we now have a chance to show the actual world right into a software program downside. By taking all the issues which can be in the actual world which can be 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 programs which can be based mostly in the actual world by doing experiments contained in the software program world. That is essentially 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 mentioned. The corporate makes use of Nvidia {hardware} and different software program on premises in its knowledge heart in Stuttgart, Germany. However it’s within the means of shifting the digital twins to the cloud. The primary activity is getting the digital twin completed, then you may share it out with different places. The corporate believes it has been in a position to enhance the productiveness of its staff by way of the digital twins. In the meantime, it has been cautious about assembly privateness necessities.

“I believe this is among the most essential subjects — democratization of information,” Burzer mentioned. “Additionally, with this synthetic intelligence, what you are able to do is you may allow every colleague working on the line, staff members, to have entry to knowledge.”

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

“It’s a totally completely different scope,” he mentioned. “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 might occur far more rapidly 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 easy in actual life, as there are completely different laws in several international locations the place modifications shall be mandated.