PTC’s Commitment to Its Customers During COVID-19: An Update

Companies across the automotive and life sciences industries are stepping forward to adjust production capacity to meet the urgent demand for ventilators and respirators. These efforts are being organized at the individual company level as well as through broad formal consortiums, like the VentilatorChallengeUK, of which PTC is a member.

PTC is extending our earlier efforts to support global manufacturers with a new offer specific to these initiatives. PTC technology enables manufacturers to capture expert procedures – like how to make ventilators – and transfer that expertise to non-experts using augmented reality (AR). The digital instructions are presented in the physical context of the plant floor. And since they are captured in digital form, they can be distributed quickly and at scale.

The same AR technology can be used to remotely guide workers through unfamiliar procedures by digitally “drawing” on their view of their physical environment. In short, we’re enabling the creation of digital “tutors” who can train or coach workers through new procedures either pre-recorded or live.

Here are specific ways the PTC technology can be applied:

1. Reference material for plant layouts can be quickly created and passed electronically to new manufacturing engineering teams.
2. New or expert assembly procedures can be quickly captured and converted to augmented reality “experiences” to accelerate knowledge transfer between seasoned employees and new workers.
3. Written SOPs can be quickly captured and converted to augmented reality “experiences” for cross-training of all workers.

To reiterate an offer we made recently, we remain committed to making our experience, and augmented reality remote support and collaboration technology, freely available to our customers and partners to help them through the COVID-19 crisis. Given travel restrictions, we know how challenging it can be to provide technical support to manufacturing and service employees, as well as customers. Our Vuforia Chalk uses augmented reality to enable remote experts to support on-site employees to service and repair machinery and products of all types. It’s like a more powerful Facetime for industrial settings and it’s just as easy and fast to set up and use.

Please be safe, and we’ll continue to look for ways that we can to help you remain productive across your product development, manufacturing, and service operations.