Automobile painting training by leveraging Virtual Reality
Automobile painting training by leveraging Virtual Reality
At a glance
Focus: Automobile painting training by leveraging Virtual Reality.
Challenge: Being the leading international company, Mahindra group delivers best quality products and the pressure is constantly rising as customer demands rise
Approach: It involves merging of virtual and physical world to create Intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business, physical and digital processes within factories and across the entire value chain
Impact: Use of VR technology in training has happened first time in Mahindra Mahindra and has proved beneficial in a number of ways
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd
Mahindra Group's parent company, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., is a dominant player in the Tractor and Automobile industry. It is both an operating company (Automotive and Farm Equipment businesses) and a holding company of all its investments in subsidiary and associate companies. M&M Ltd. is among the market leaders in the Indian SUV/ MUV segment and the world’s largest tractor company by volumes. Mahindra is truly a global company with its global neural network of R&D and manufacturing facilities as well as on ground channel network. Committed to ethical values, sustainable business practices, towards driving positive change, M&M creates value by judiciously and intelligently leveraging the multiple types of capital – not just Financial Capital, but also Manufactured Capital, Intellectual Capital, Human Capital, Social & Relationship Capital and Natural Capital.
Business challenge
Being the leading international company, Mahindra group delivers best quality products and the pressure is constantly rising as customer demands rises. Painting is one of the most important parameters when it comes to automobiles. Our team analysed car painting and its training process and realized that time, cost and wastage were the major consumables in paint dexterity.
Given the popularity of virtual reality and its vast range of applications, our team decided to use the same technology for the training purpose.
It was the very first time that VR in painting dexterity was being used so the software developer had no prior functional knowledge as a result of which simulating the booth conditions and selecting painting parameters was a difficult task. The Paint spray pattern is a function of number of parameters, simulating those parameters to reproduce the same pattern in VR environment was another challenging task.
The above two issues were addressed by developing an algorithm that calculates the number of particles sprayed in a particular grid and if the number of particles exceed the threshold value defects are generated.
This solution has led to Re-skill current employees to develop talent for successful transformation.
Industry 4.0 solution
It involves merging of virtual and physical world to create Intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business, physical and digital processes within factories and across the entire value chain.
Virtual Reality is an enabler to achieve this goal and keeping up with Mahindra's commitment to implement digitisation in manufacturing. We are the pioneers in harnessing the benefits of this innovative training solution.
The physical training of car painting that the trainees used to undergo is now replaced by the virtual training . The Trainee uses the VR technology to learn the painting during this course. MVML has designed modules for the course that covers different skill-sets required for the job. This training is designed for the high-end XUV models but we apply the same training procedures for all other models as well.
This advanced software can track the performance & also helps the trainee to understand all the aspects of the job such as the distance one should keep from the car while painting, the amount of paint one should use, etc. At the end of the course, a trainee is given a score-card that is generated with the help of the VR dexterity. The score card reflects the areas of improvement where the trainee needs to focus.
Key benefits
| Area | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Time & Speed | Use of VR technology in training has happened first time in Mahindra & Mahindra and has proved beneficial in a number of ways - |
| Operational Benefit | Increased customer satisfaction |
| Cost Savings | Manpower cost savings of Rs 5.6 crores/p.a |
| Operational Benefit | Training man days reduced to 1 day/person from 3 days/person |
| Operational Benefit | Better understanding of painting sequence, key areas on the body shell |
| Operational Benefit | VOC reduction as physical paint is not used |