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Giving life to an Idea!

Guest blogger: Santosh Harakamani at Volvo IT in Bangalore, India. Santosh provided one of the winning ideas in our yearly innovation JAM!

It was reflection time for me at the end of a successful daylong workshop with Customer. A great day spent across the table with Customer; sharing the growth path, vision, strategy and more eager than us to try the prototype involving their customer and customer’s customer! It was a rare occasion when head of sales & marketing at customer and their regional teams spending full day with lots of energy and agreeing for the next joint plan.

Sounds like a good business meeting, just that it was not. The meeting was to discuss my idea “Telematics on School buses” selected at the JAM IT 2012. A proud moment seeing the idea has reached the customer to try the prototype jointly with VIT through a well-crafted and executed prototype model. Continue Reading →

From Vision to Reality – Innovation Exhibition at Volvo Group

Two weeks ago the team was involved in three-day long exhibition for people within the Volvo Group. The exhibition was coordinated from Group Trucks Technology and the purpose was to share interesting projects and prototypes between the function and units. Different sites all around the globe participated and we from Volvo IT, TWBI showcased seven different business innovation prototypes; covering many fields. We also participated in the seminar sessions in which two from the team spoke about how we go from vision to reality which was the theme for the entire event. I really enjoy these sessions where you have opportunities to meet and to discuss with peers within the Volvo group. Personally I had many interesting dialogues which hopefully can lead to interesting collaboration activities in the future.

Stephane Parisot in action at Innovation Event in Lyon

The next generation of workinstructions

Two years ago, was the first time I came in contact with Volvo IT and the Tech Watch & Business Innovation department. It was the start of a one year master thesis and we left the meeting with one question to answer: How can we create paperless assembly factories. The task seemed simple at first; simply display the work instructions in a digital form. Half a year of academic research proved the task was much more complex than that.

In future assembly systems extreme flexibility will be needed in order to handle the rapid changes in customer demand and mass-customization. Thereby the amount of information surrounding the assembly personnel is vast. This information flow requires the attention to be at a maximum at every moment in order not to compromise the quality.

When trying to push new information to the operators we need to make sure only to focus on the most important information and let all other information be within reach. Information is quickly ignored if repeated and irrelevant.

This research led to a prototype called iMont, where we used an iPhone to display information to the assembly operator. A consumer product like the iPhone has the advantage of mobility, intuitive user interface and social acceptance from the users (Using consumer gadgets Vs Industrial specific equipment). By using a mobile device to unify information we can avoid ambiguity in the information and use attention triggers such as the vibrator to alert important information.

Advantages of mobile information services:

Always available and allows for easy communication
Allows for late changes in production
Can be personalized to suit different levels of experience
Provides new capabilities for visualizing instructions
Multi-modal attention triggers can prevent common errors

IT solutions are not always positively experienced by the production personnel. In this case however, we included a test group from the assembly line that where involved in several steps of the development of the prototype. This way of working proved positive as all users that tested the application wanted to see the application realized.

Other mobility prototypes that I have been involved in:

Connected Mechanic – Mobile work instructions for mechanics
Service By Voice – Voice enabled applications on smartphones for technicians in the workshop

At the moment I am working on a commuter gamification that will help in “Keepin’ the world cool”, this prototype was awarded best prototype at http://www.travelhack.se/ earlier this month. More information about this project at http://www.greenbits.se/.

Instructions in your pocket (volvoitblog.com)
Volvo Group TechShow 2011 (volvoitblog.com)

Using consumer gadgets Vs Industrial specific equipment

GPS navigation solution running on a smartphon...

Image via Wikipedia

A large part of my latest prototypes have had the same theme. That theme is “using consumer products (smartphones) instead of industrial specific devices”.

Smartphones are the most intelligent gadgets we are normally using these days. It give us far more information than the pc. For instance by using GPS, compass, camera, gyroscope combined with patttern recognition, touch screen interface and so on.

The advantages of using smart phones instead of special made hardware are many. For instance:

High volumes will typically have lower costs.
It is also cheap to replace a damaged device.
There are lots of developers of programs and apps. This means that development costs also are lower.
The hardware is much more tested and reliable.
New models are coming all the time and are relatively cheap to upgrade.
As smartphone manufacturers become more skilled the user interface is usually much easier to use.

The cost of a custom made device is often a factor of 10-100 times a smartphone.
Sometimes I get the argument that within a factory or workshop environment, you need a robust hardware that is when you lose it and that can withstand oily fingers. Sure, but a typical smartphone can actually be ruggedized with a cheap enclosure that makes it more durable. So the question is if the smartphone can do the same job as a special made gadget. If it can or if it only lacks a small portion of the functionality. Go for it!

Following are some of my prototypes with this theme:

Service By Voice – Voice enabled applications on smartphones for technicians in the workshop
Track, Trace and reporting through the smartphone – Enabling real-time reporting of pick-up and delivery of goods within logistics processes
Remote Video Support – Enabling real time support through streaming video

Volvo Group TechShow 2011

Last week, our team, TechWatch & Business Innovation, participated in the Volvo Group TechShow, a great full week event, aiming for demonstrating new innovative concepts and solutions that have not yet reached the market. Over 100+ exhibitors, visitors from all Volvo Group BA/BU’s, customers, partners, suppliers, universities external press etc.

Our small team, TechWatch & Business Innovation, had these stations;

Connected Mechanic
- We explored how mobile technologies can be used to provide personalized and more user friendly access to service information for mechanics.
iMONT
- The prototype explores new ways to present information to the assembly worker through the use of Smartphones. Enabling the user to get personalized data at the right time and at the location it is needed – saving time and improving quality.
Roadmapper
- We explored new methods and technologies for visualization of business and technology roadmaps. By utilizing new innovative ways to interact with data we added value for all stakeholders working with these plans at Volvo.
Serious leap / game on lean manufacturing
- A prototype that explored the potential of game-based learning, both from a technical and business value perspective.

Meet J-P Fendrich, our TechWatch manager, who presented the “Serious Leap” prototype

Prototyping & Creativity workshops in China & Japan

After two full weeks of travelling and working together with collegues in China and Japan I feel energized! The creativity workshops in Beijing, Shanghai and Ageo together with our collegues generated many, many ideas adopted to the local market needs. I remember that Kerstin and I tried to keep up with documenting all ideas about new services and applications for the aftermarket & Softproducts teams - sessions like this really gives me energy!

On going creativity Workshop

Service by Voice prototype testing in action

Many discussions we had during the trip was about reversed innovation and also how we could utilize the exponential growth on the consumer market to find solutions, consumerization, suitable for the local markets in Asia.
During a lunch at a restaurant close to the office in Beijing I noticed that the waiter used a standard feature phone and tapped in all our order in an application on the phone – this is exatcly the solutions that we need to explore and reverse back to the western countries. Using consumer products and applications inside the business processes would most certain allow us to develop solutions to a lower cost and with accepted functionally. A similar mindset and resoning that we used when developing our prototypes, Service by Voice and Connected Mechanic, that we tested at the Beijing walker dealership – enabling the mechanics to access service instruction via a smartphone application.

Indoor positioning – will it be the next big thing?

Indoor positioning has been around for a couple of years, mainly utilizing Near Field Communication (NFC) like Rfid – both passive and active. This technology has proven to be a good investment for some specific niche processes but not found its way into the larger parts of the enterprise. Often due to the need of investing in additional infrastructure.

With an increase in penetration of smartphones on the market there has been more and more start-ups focusing on indoor location services, utilizing the existing infrastructure such as WiFi. For the consumer markets the business model will probably be to use ads from the businesses within a mall. The applications will help the end user to navigate to a specific store within the mall. There are many companies in this field using different core technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, Ultra Wide Band or a combination of them. The choice of technology is made depended on the environment in which it will be used. In an industrial environment containing a lot of steel, such as a factory, todays solutions with the highest accuracy is based on UWB. Within Tech Watch & BI we explored this area in a factory context two years ago and you can find additional informaiton here – Location Based Assembly Support

Here are some other interesting links to companies that are exploring this field such as Nokia

Ekahau offers a WiFi based indoor tracking service

Ubisense – Ultra Wide Band core technology an now also moving into GPS for both indoor and outdoor applications.

Do you have any ideas on how Volvo Group could utilize this technology and add value for the end customer?

Prototyping the Visual & Social process of the future

How can we create a virtual room in which people meet to discuss, collaborate and express their views on what is needed to drive the business forward? How can we find ways to aggregate data from different connected activities and present this in an understandable way? This is what I together with my prototype partners am exploring right now. The main challenge is to create a virtual “coffee room” and adding “war room” features in a rich user experience format. The focus is on rich internet application but also trying to find new methods to display connected data. The aim is to find a new “state of the art” method and combine that method with a rich user experience. We believe that this will add business value in terms of improved decision quality and speed in execution.

Some examples of innovative visualizations that connect the dots and presents complex data in a understandable way.

Microsoft Pivot:

http://www.getpivot.com/

If you have any ideas for methods and technologies that can help us bring order in chaos and improve that user experience please comment!

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