Vice President of Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation at Jabil. More than 20 years of experience helping global groups implement manufacturing.
For more than five years, excluding the last five months, I have painted in a high-tech lab located in a Silicon Valley innovation center. Going to painting was an opportunity to be fully immersed in a continuous learning environment with cutting-edge technologies and some of the most productive minds in engineering, science and manufacturing. Until the day when, of course, we went to a style of running from home.
Overnight, we separate ourselves from each other, as well as our essential hardware, software and lab tools. However, we still find dozens of critical production processes, many of which have been transferred, implemented and audited in factories and services around the world. How do we evolve in the face of the pandemic? To achieve seamless collaboration and drive innovation, we have jointly sought our helmets of augmented truth and virtual truth (AR/VR).
These teams have already proven to be operators of education production lines, while guiding them through complex production operations. In Singapore, for example, a team of engineers working at our additive production facility uses RA to reduce training time by 50% on complex 3D printers. Similarly, it speeds up maintenance education and facilitates remote assistance.
Building cyberphysical bridges
With the end of The Covid-19 offices, the adoption of RA/VR increased as global groups from all kinds of businesses sought new tactics to bring people, positions and things together. The semiconductor industry, among other high-tech sectors, has followed RA to keep machines in factories. For example, Porsche technicians used 3x more RA in February and March alone, while runner technicians used remote experts to solve disorders that may not be diagnosed without problems.
In addition to classic remote education and maintenance applications, daily use of RA/VR to increase productivity is being developed in legions of generation companies, adding Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook. As organizations expand and expand their work policies from home, it is incredibly vital to fill in physical, technological, and communication gaps. The same regulations apply to innovation centers, especially since persistent constraints particularly replace the way we interact with them in the future.
Each physical delight will want its own virtual counterpart that aligns and complements it to move wisdom while fostering a culture of being informed non-stop. This will not only be the way we paint and be informed in classic work environments, but will particularly replace the nature of innovation centres.
Innovation frontiers
Instead of searching innovation centers as independent destinations that show displays of achievement beyond, they will come to be noticed as very important gears in an ever-changing technology, progress and learning wheel. As much as I enjoyed visiting the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota (mainly because I can see with my own eyes the post-It Notes inventions and artificial fabrics used for the soles of Neil Armstrong’s walking boots on the moon), I now realize that a virtual excursion would have been just as rewarding.
The global becomes much more available when using RA/VR to fill gaps and cross borders. In the future, our virtual conduits will connect explorers, engineers, and contractors in individual factories and laboratories around the world to read about theories, stress testing processes, and interaction in original thinking.
I plan an organization of virtual guides that can help broaden our vision of what is imaginable by combining employees, visitors, and innovation center partners to get new reports over time and space. If this sounds a little too sci-fi, then it creates the strength of having your own non-public avatar that completely immerses you in experiential learning.
Advancing innovation with avatars
I look forward to running with my avatar, who I am convinced will be a wonderful innovation partner. I’m excited about the day when programs like Space have allowed me to create a realistic avatar and paintings along it. “Avatar Dan”, as I will call it, can take me to the center of a new product design site in Shanghai after attending our learning academy in Marcianise, Italy, to practice advances in optical communications. My globe-trotting avatar and I will have the newest hardware, software and equipment needed to expand factory advances of all kinds.
In addition, my non-public avatar and I will paint in parallel (sometimes simultaneously) to balance physical and virtual experiences. Two-way, organic access will be as we coordinate and collaborate with other physical and virtual groups in other innovation centers and laboratories, in factories and among consumers and partners around the world.
Ultimately, we’ll create a massive innovation sandbox that will facilitate knowledge sharing and create a robust skill pipeline to drive production advances to be delivered to global factories. And only my avatar will be very artistic and productive, but it will also be avant-garde, especially now that avatars are joining forces with major fashion brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
The more I think about it, the more excited I am with the paintings with the avatar Dan dressed in Gucci, I hope so soon.
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Vice President of Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation at Jabil. More than 20 years of experience helping global groups implement manufacturing. Read Dan Gamota’s full
Vice President of Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation at Jabil. More than 20 years of experience helping global groups implement manufacturing. Read Dan Gamota’s full control profile here.