Porsche sets new quality standards thanks to augmented reality

An augmented reality solution has been implemented at the Inno-Space in Leipzig that allows, via tablets, verify the design and production of a car and achieve optimal quality control.

During the last 70 years, Porsche has been synonymous with building sports cars at the highest level and with an excellent quality standard.. This month of February, The German company has launched in the area of ​​innovation (Inno-Space), which has just opened at the Leipzig facility, an experience developed with augmented reality that seeks to obtain the maximum quality of its vehicles.

This solution has been implemented in the production process and seeks to provide a fast and reliable means of highlighting deviations from the specified level of perfection., allowing time savings and a significant increase in the quality of the analysis.

Inno-Space team collaborates with several universities and startups. In association with GTV, a start-up based in Dresden, Porsche has used augmented reality as a technical platform for quality control.

The Inno-Space is a meeting point between the present and the future for quality control, developing innovations that can be transferred to mass production processes at the plant. In this area, can simulate an IT factory environment, which is then connected to the plant in a controlled way in order to integrate new developments into the production process.

An internal IT team working in collaboration with the quality management team is the driving force behind these new technologies, applications and processes. “At Inno-Space we can design and test pioneering concepts for the future without disrupting normal plant processes.”, dice Albrecht Reimold, member of the Executive Board of Production and Logistics of Porsche AG.

GTV has worked together with the Fraunhofer Society to develop a tablet app that takes defects found during appearance and feel testing and overlays them on an image of the vehicle at each stage of the production process. Individual vehicle CAD data is read into the app and the tablet camera hovers over a component. CAD image is superimposed on live image, making defects or deviations immediately visible.

The database also includes details of other parameters, like joints. In this case, Comparing the real-time image to the CAD image directly highlights any areas that do not meet the required standard.

Another advantage is that the testing process can be transmitted in real time to any partner or site. At the same time, detected defects are stored in the plant's central database and made available worldwide.

““The fact that the tablet is connected to the network allows us to do things like quality audits with our suppliers through video conferencing”, explica Andreas Schmidt, Head of Quality at the Porsche plant in Leipzig and responsible for implementing the augmented reality project.