As the “Industrial Internet” and The Internet of Things (IOT) go beyond the buzz-words of the board room, aerospace manufacturers and industrial leaders have started to implement some of the latest technology to make their manufacturing processes more efficient with reduced errors, deliver products to market more rapidly and finally leverage big data within their own organization. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are both mediums at which the industries are looking at to make work instructions easier and training more adaptive; these applications can provide “green” talent with contemporary tools and improve the production process. Augmented and Virtual Reality experiences have been created for the entertainment and gaming industries and for various marketing and brand awareness campaigns, nonetheless they still a way to go to influence the aerospace community.  

So, with early adoption and various use cases testing the productivity gains within the enterprise, how has Augmented Reality impacted the aerospace shop floor, and what technologies are necessary for its adoption to accelerate?

Industry giants like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Applied Materials have invested in the development of both AR hardware and software solutions and have side projects and secretive labs dabbling with head-mounted wearables, light projections, telepresence or remote assist and SDKs to improve costs, time of task and error reductions on the shop-floor. The good news is that AR hardware and software are improving at a tremendous rate with the help of these use cases and investments. The capability of smart-glasses, smartphones and tablets are making astonishing strides in computational, graphical and sensory power with clearer, higher resolution displays and improvements to battery life enabling easier ways to consume and create AR and VR content. Some limiting factors that developers are dealing with is the amount of available memory and battery power on portable devices. Network latency also requires careful consideration when system architecture dictates whether this content should be stored on the device or a remote content server.

The future of Augmented Reality (AR) in the Enterprise however is a bit clearer today as the result of the recent DMDII/AREA Requirements Workshop in Chicago. At first glance, the two-day event promised to be a worthwhile exchange among parties with shared interests. On one side was the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), which had invested considerable time and effort into creating a detailed set of requirements for enterprise AR with the assistance of American industry heavyweights Lockheed Martin, Procter & Gamble, and Caterpillar. On the other side was the AREA, the organization leading global efforts to drive adoption of AR in the enterprise. The AREA is to take over responsibility for the requirements document and its future.
But when the parties gathered in Chicago in the beginning of March, the event proved to be more significant than anyone could have expected. Here’s why:

• It demonstrated the burgeoning interest in enterprise AR throughout the developing ecosystem. The event attracted 90 attendees from 45 companies – all deeply committed to AR and eager to share their thoughts with one another.
• It provided an unprecedented opportunity for AR hardware and software providers to engage directly with enterprise AR users. With the detailed requirements to refer to, participants were able to engage with each other substantively and specifically.
• It signified the beginning of a global effort to make the process of implementing AR projects simpler and more orderly. With a set of requirements that will grow, become more defined and use case-specific over time under the aegis of the AREA, enterprises will have the power to define their AR solution needs clearly and confidently. Our goal at the AREA is to make the requirements accessible and usable to the wider AR ecosystem.
• It gives AR solutions providers a vital resource for developing their product development roadmaps. The direct feedback of the user community made it clear to hardware and software providers where they need to invest their R&D budgets in the near and medium term.
• It created the basis for a more open, vibrant, and participatory AR ecosystem. As the AREA makes the requirements a “living document” to which all organizations can contribute, they will become an increasingly useful resource to a wider range of organizations and will accelerate the adoption of successful AR projects in the enterprise.
• Many aerospace component manufacturers will soon be mandated to adopt XML and S1000D publishing standards for all of their various component or airframe maintenance manuals in order to not only comply with airframer requirements but to exploit the re-usability properties of the markup language for content re-use. Aircraft maintenance technicians must obtain new levels of job skill and knowledge to effectively work with modern computer-based avionics and advanced composite materials. Traditional methods of training, such as on-the-job training, may not have potential to fulfill the training requirements to meet the future needs of aviation maintenance. With a standardized, XML-based (or ARML 2.0), now aircraft maintenance technicians are getting even closer to an augmented training environment. An AR system coupled with the reusable properties of XML could enable job task training and job task guidance for the novice technician in a real world environment. It could reduce the cost of training and retraining of aircraft maintenance technicians by contemplating human information processing and assisting with performance of job tasks. Considering that these “live” industry standards and requirements for Augmented Reality content creation (software / hardware) have commenced in the space, enterprise now has a framework in which to govern these new tools, their usage and a way to work in parallel with their specific, industry compliance and regulatory structure. Organizations like AREA (Augmented Reality Enterprise Alliance) are working with industry leaders and executives to formalize and standardize the AR implementation process. Content creation, privacy, protection of intellectual property and industry applicability are all items at the top of the list for groups like AREA and their enterprise counterparts to consider when trying to create a baseline of governance to AR creation and usage.
• In order to deploy new technologies, all industry needs to build strong business cases to get upper management to approve budgets and prove that these new tools will provide a significant return on investment, improve the manufacturing process, and improve safety on the shop floor. Aerospace manufacturers need to keep their technicians on-task and keep them “ship-side”. As soon as the technician has to leave his or her work space to retrieve a part or refer to a colleague for advice or assistance, productivity is lost. AR tools can significantly reduce the time to complete tasks and can provide remote assistance that keep the technician in his or her workspace longer and promotes better efficiency. However, there are still parts of the puzzle like tracking and visualization that need some more development and only with properly initiated use cases will aerospace enterprise be able to reap the benefits of this emerging technology.
   
   
  

Today, leading organizations around the globe are making major commitments to the process of business transformation. The goal of the reshaping effort is to minimize risk, and achieve greater efficiency, profitability and agility – all vital ingredients for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in a number of verticals.  Engineering Services Outsourcing (ESO) is an end-to-end solution and a strong business case can be built to an outsourcing partner with the expertise, experience, technology and customer focus to deliver benchmark capabilities based on industry’s best practices. Major aspects have channelized a new trend in ESO; the sheer diversity of engineering services, the outlook that most outsourcing will turn toward an engineering Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) offering and the pressing need for cost control in yet to be stabilized global markets that are still running on budget austerity efforts.

Many of the largest OEMs in North America and Western Europe have considered ESO as an extension of their engineering organization. According to data collected in 2014, India-based providers have accounted for nearly a quarter of the overall engineering services market, which is worth approximately $80 billion a year. The Indian ESO industry has been made up of Global Engineering Centers (GECs) and engineering services providers (ESPs). Half of the top research and development (R&D) spenders operate in India through these GECs.

Recent advances in sensor technology, wireless communications, distributed computing and big-data capabilities are enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) to rapidly transform the technology landscape. IT and embedded electronics are permeating the product and service engineering process, and consumers’ expectations and requirements are increasing just as rapidly. Organizations in all industries must now deal with a profusion of data and devices. This new challenge is creating unique opportunities for ESO providers to create intelligent engineering applications to customize and monitor the entire product experience; ideas like the connected car, real-time and continuous healthcare and remote monitoring of smart homes.

Engineering and designers are creating products that capture their own usage data and establish a continuous feedback loop. This way they can make their products more intelligent, and OEMs can increasingly deliver their products as-a-service and use software applications to define the customer experience and product evolution. Companies typically outsource their engineering and design when they have sporadic engineering needs, need to load balance the work and may have trouble getting to those important projects. Manufacturers reasons to outsource are: (1) They can’t justify having their own engineering team for every design project, (2) they have an internal team with capability and capacity but need to manage spiking demand or they require specialized expertise.

ESO will be characterized by the “integration of manufacturing” as a required field of expertise. As the industrial internet becomes more secure, industrial automation, robotics and 3D printing will enable a new dynamic and a new knowledge and talent base. As an example with GE Aviation and Honeywell, the resource landscape is changing. Half of their workforce consists of Chemical / Electronic / Mechanical engineers, the other half are software engineers. This integration requires a newly defined skill set and expertise consistent to with the digital approach to manufacturing.   
A wave of engineering services should present itself in two phases in the coming years:

1. The evolution of the “digital-shop floor” will integrate previously siloed information across an enterprise with systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) resulting in increased productivity, optimized operational costs, enhance asset uptime utility and improved safety.
   
   
2. The design-to-print concepts of additive and 3D manufacturing will impact product maintenance and repair requirements. Imagine a washing machine or a predictive maintenance system that provides 24/7 monitoring of the production of expensive infrastructure equipment that can trigger the printing of a spare part at a local provider in a fraction of the time and cost.
   

To realize the full potential of these growth opportunities over the next five years, the ESO delivery model must change. GECs that are entirely focused on engineering products must address the challenges of IT-enabled engineering by broadening their scope and enhancing their investments in new processes and technology. They must also leverage the higher level of experience, exposure and investments of ESO providers in a collaborative model.

Managed, Shared or BPO Services contracts will move away from the traditional engagement models to demand more value and tighter service integration including pricing aligned with client business metrics, stringent service-level agreements and key performance indicators. This way the business model will shift toward greater sharing of risk and reward between the customer and the service provider.