DigitalituM Podcast Episode 6 - FENG Webinar: Use cases of immersive Technology (AR/VR/XR) in Manufacturing

Summary

In this conversation, Markus Rimmele discusses digitalization tools in manufacturing, specifically focusing on immersive technology such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in a Webinar with FENG . The Financial Executives Networking Group #FENG is a 501(c)(3), founded in 1991 as a forum for senior financial executives to share job opportunities and experiences. Members have held titles such as Chief Financial Officer, Controller, Treasurer, Managing Director, Vice President of Tax, Mergers & Acquisitions, or Internal Audit.
Website: https://www.thefeng.org/

He highlights the challenges faced in manufacturing, such as labor shortages and skills gaps, and the need for digital tools to improve efficiency and competitiveness. Markus showcases various use cases of immersive technology, including support in field service, visualization of complex machinery, technical training, and the manual assembly process. He also mentions the future possibilities of better hardware, IoT connectivity, and digital twins.

Takeaways

Digitalization tools in manufacturing, such as immersive technology, can improve efficiency and competitiveness.
Immersive technology, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), has various use cases in manufacturing, such as support in field service, visualization of complex machinery, technical training, and the process of manual assembly.
Immersive technology can provide real-time guidance and enhance the learning experience for operators.
Digitalization tools can help address challenges in manufacturing, such as labor shortages, skills gaps, and inefficient processes.
Future developments in immersive technology include better hardware, IoT connectivity, and digital twins.
Small and medium manufacturers can benefit from the expertise of external consultants to navigate the digitalization journey.

Sound Bites

"Unplanned downtime is the most expensive cost in manufacturing."
"Get the information you need at the location you are to fix or use the problem you're having."
"Guide operators step-by-step with virtual reality training for higher retention and efficiency."

Sound Bites

"Unplanned downtime is the most expensive cost in manufacturing."
"Get the information you need at the location you are to fix or use the problem you're having."
"Guide operators step-by-step with virtual reality training for higher retention and efficiency."

Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations about manufacturing and digital transformation. Also, remember to follow and subscribe to the DigitalituM Podcast for exclusive insights from industry leaders and innovators.

We appreciate your likes and comments. If you feel you can add value to this podcast series and want to be our guest, send an email to Sales@DigitalituM.com

Transcript

Markus Rimmele (01:50)
for the intro and I just want to ask if the recording is started and we're rock and roll. Yes, today we talk about digitalization tools in manufacturing and I give you a little bit of an overview. What is out there, what's possible and what problems can be solved. I have a couple of slides and I'm browsing through.

As Chris mentioned, if you have any questions, put your hand up or use that hand up button as I don't see all of you on my other screen or maybe Chris tells me and then I'm happy to answer all the questions.

All right, what are we talking today about? Let's click that thingy through. Do a quick intro of what we're doing at the Digitalitum. Go into a couple of problem statements. In this presentation, I focus specifically on immersive technology, which means everything under the umbrella of AR, augmented reality, VR, virtual reality, and XR.

mixed reality and also explain what are the difference between all these different acronyms. I'll show you a couple of augmented reality use cases and some virtual reality use cases. And then we look a little bit into the future. What do we do at Digitalitum? Here is a quick video. Digitalitum explained in one minute.

Manufacturing has its challenges. We have a worker shortage and a skills gap, and we deal with old paper -based processes. Labor shortage, job training issues, too many different Excel sheets, no outcome data visualization, no support out in the field, inefficient shop floor planning, and issues with manual assembly processes. Do you know these problems? Do you have these challenges too?

The toolbox offers special tools custom to your needs. Similar to your analog toolbox with wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers, but more advanced.

With our manufacturing experience and certified digitalization competence, we are able to recommend the right solution for you.

We help you to choose the right digital tools to improve efficiency and competitiveness, making sure your team fully utilizes new technologies and we provide ongoing support to keep your tools effective over time. Ready to change? Contact us at Digitalitum. We are happy to help you on your digital transformation journey.

All right. That was Digitalitum, the company I founded three years ago. Hear a little bit about me. Born and raised in South Germany, living now for 16 years in the U .S. I'm Atlanta, Georgia based. My background is in electrical engineering and I'm an MBA from Georgia State University here in Atlanta. I worked in my past for a couple of different German machine builders. That's how I came 16 years ago

the US and did more or less everything what you need to do when you build a machine from design to build to installation, commissioning, production ramp up service. So I spent quite some time in the factories of the world, four continents, 30 countries, 30 states in the US. In my last

position as an employee, I led the field service of a German machine builder. Unfortunately, with COVID that went all down the hill and they shut the US operations down. And that led me then to decide, I start my own show and focus on what is my passion, which is digitalization, which I see as a solution for a lot of problems we have out there. And as I'm not busy enough, I'm

part of several different volunteer organizations like the Reliability Consortium and support their digitalization group. I'm part of a group which puts content in books, which then published and showcased and conferences like the International Maintenance Conference.

I have a, I call the machine cluster North Atlanta. It's a CEO round table for machine builders in the Atlanta area. We meet every couple of months and exchange on all the different topics we have. And I just got certified by CESMII , the Smart Manufacturing Institute in a specific roadmap consulting program to evaluate where manufacturers are and kind of help them on their.

digitalization journey. Any questions?

Good. So then let's talk about the problem out there. If we look on a manufacturing shop floor, we see that the complex activity of machinery goes up specifically the software part gets always more complex while the mechanic and the electric part goes down. If we then look on the other hand on the main power side,

We see a lot of labor shortage and skills gap. And if we focus that on, on field service and maintenance people, you really feel the pain as with the complexity on one side, the kind of quantity and quality of the field service people stagnance. And that creates a big gap. this gap causes in my point of view, unplanned downtime.

And the solution for that is of course more training, but also the usage of tools under the umbrella of digitalization. On the other hand, I see a phenomenon, what I call the digital fog. Let's see. What does this mean? There are a lot of...

buzzwords out there with all this different technologies. And a lot of people have different ideas what all this buzzwords mean, but a lot of people are kind of not understanding what's all going on in this digital world because it's intangible. You cannot really touch it. You cannot really feel it. And so people are overwhelmed and kind of postponing things under the umbrella of digitalization because they just don't know. And that's where we

come in as expert to help out. That's again, this service, what we offer through CESMII the certified smart manufacturing road map consultation, what it does more or less, and that is the first step we evaluate where you as a manufacturer are through specific surveys and interviews, then define where to go.

and then define out of this a specific roadmap with step -by -step goals of what makes sense for your company, even where you are with the budget where you have to go to the next step in order to grow in that digital transformation journey.

When I talk about my business, I always talk about digital tools. What do I mean with that? I actually took that from the traditional toolbox we use in field service and maintenance, which everybody of you know, even if you have a financial background, you know what a toolbox is. And if you look deeper into that, in this toolbox, you see many different tools, see screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches.

And when we ask ourselves, why do we need all these different tools? Then the reason is pretty easy because each tool can normally do only one thing. That's why you need all these different tools. And we look into screwdrivers or wrenches, you need actually a bunch of different sizes and shapes because like there are different sizes and wrenches and there are different shapes and sizes in screws. Like have you ever tried to open a flathead screw with a Phillips screwdriver?

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. It may work the other way around, but not in this combination. So you need the right tool to fix, to do the right thing. And in the digital world, I kind of see it the same way. There are now thousands, maybe even now with all the AI tools, million tools out there. And again, each tool can do a certain thing and you have to use the right tool for the right use case. And as mentioned with the

Digital fog, I see people kind of overwhelmed with that. That's why we come in place by understanding your problems, understanding the tools landscape, and then recommend the right tool for you in order to get you better, faster, more efficient, and provide more value to your client.

this is the current overview of, companies we work with. Most of these companies are actually out of Germany, kind of in the startup phase. They developed unique applications and products using this different technologies to fix specific problems and have specific use cases. They are already successful in their.

German European market and we with Digitalitum on one side help these companies to enter the US through our network. And on the other hand, we consult companies like you and help them with these tools to get better, faster and more efficient. As I said, we have here a lot of different technologies, VR, AR.

IOT, additive manufacturing, AI. We focus in this session specifically everything under the umbrella of immersive, which means AR and we.

So what does this actually mean?

Immersive technology refers to a new way of creating, displaying and interacting with applications, content and experience. So by using this specific hardware, maybe you guys have already virtual reality glasses or saw them or your kids are using them. With this, you can put content

into your vault and in augmented reality, you normally use, for example, a phone and with the camera, it sees what you see, and then you can add additional information into that. Use cases in personal life are

What I see when you go shopping, you're able to kind of see how specific clothes or makeup look on you and through an app on your phone, this is all possible. In manufacturing and engineering, this can be used to give the information you need at the location you are in. see later a couple of applications for that.

In virtual reality, you have actually this glasses on and that's more or less a little computer screen and you do not see your surrounding. You're literally in another vault doing things in a three -dimensional vault. And then last but not least, in mixed reality, you kind of use this guy as well, the virtual reality class. This is a MetaQuest 3.

But on this model, see, let me hold it like this into my camera. There actually cameras here in the front and even on the bottom. And with this, it actually sees your surrounding and then adds again, three dimensional objects into it. And then you can do stuff with it.

Well, in the personal life with a lot of different gaming applications and in the engineering world, of course, there are a couple of applications as well. There was a question.

Nope. All right.

Let's do a quick show of hands. Who of you have used anything in the immersive world in their, let's say personal life already, either an augmented reality application or maybe even play some games with this guy here.

I see one guy, two guys. Okay, that is so far a good feedback. But for the rest of you, it's kind of a new thing, I guess. Okay, then let me go in my explanation a little more in basic.

All right, what can you actually do with this new stuff specifically in the focus of engineering, maintenance, manufacturing? There are a couple of different things. In the development of new production places, machinery, you actually can use to simulate

complex machinery as you have the opportunity to take a 3D model from your CAD system of choice, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, whatever you use, put it in virtual reality and actually see how it performs, animate, kind of get an experience on that already on the simulation part. Then for everything under the umbrella of marketing and sales, of course, if in a traditional way,

Let's say you're a machine builder, you want to sell your awesome machine. And traditionally they come with a piece of paper, a picture of the machine, a lot of technical text to it, and try to tell you this is the machine you need to buy. It's just difficult to transmit this complex content in a picture and a lot of technical text. If you're able to show that through a 3D animation,

That's way cooler and way better to be explained. Then throughout the commissioning phase of a piece of machinery in a new factory, it helps again in the whole simulation of things when, for example, certain pieces are not there yet. Then we come in the whole area of technical training. That's where you have the really good use case.

I always say get the information you need at the location you are on the device you have with you in order to do your job right versus going to that maintenance shop, finding the information in the hundreds of different paper binders to then figure out when you think you have the right paper binder that your coworker actually ripped out that page what you're looking for. It happened to me a lot in my past.

And then as well in maintenance and service, that's where things like this come in handy.

In this first tool, I want to show you, we talk about the support in field service or maintenance. a lot of situations, we have people out in front of a piece of equipment. It doesn't work. And the expert who knows about it is either internal and maybe some wells or in another plant.

or it's a supplier and that person is also in another plant. And without seeing what's going on, it's just difficult to troubleshoot. And there's a way of doing a video call with additional augmentation in order to faster troubleshoot things. How could that look like? Let's look in a quick video.

So here we see a client has a problem. They call via this tool, the expert. In this case, it's me. And I see what they see. And with you see this augmented reality markers, I can draw into the picture and explain, for example, how to orient this part into the machine in order that it works. If I try to describe that in words,

It's just difficult if there's an additional language barrier or bad network communication. It's just hard. And with this, it's just so easy and done in a few seconds. Problem solved, rock and roll. Machine is running. Isn't that awesome?

So again, get the information you need at the location you are in order to get the thing running. Another application for augmented reality is here, the visualization of complex machinery. This is again, the kind of marketing use case. Imagine you want to buy a new production machinery.

And your machine builder sends you a link. You click on it in your web browser. And now you see this beautiful piece of machinery in 3D. You can actually move it around. You get this additional information. And now we do a little live action. We actually put that machine in your office. How do we do that?

Please take your smartphone and scan this code please and let the magic happen.

me do it as well just to make sure it actually works. So camera mode.

It should give you that link. With that link, it should open your web browser. Now, depending on the internet speed you have, it takes a few seconds to download and then you should see.

actually this, do not to bring the, I put the code back. And then from there, I have an iPhone. It actually switches over into a camera mode. And then it asked me to move my phone. I go now behind me, try to scan the space. And then all of a sudden it actually places that thing.

behind me in one to one so that machine cell is about four by four meters, which is 12 by 12 feet. So most likely it doesn't fit into your office. If you use the two finger zoom method, you actually can make it smaller.

And now you have this piece of machinery in your office. And the magic thing is now that your phone is like your lens. So you can literally walk around it, see it from different angles. And if you want to, you actually can walk into machine and see the inside. And if you do that, you see it's so detailed. see every nut and bolt.

And again, this is just an easy way to explain a piece of machinery or even do things like you want to buy this piece of machinery, but you're not sure if it actually fits into the space you have on your shop floor. With this, you just try it out and then you figure out, damn it. There's this one pillar in the middle, which is kind of in the side and that was not part of any drawing.

with an easy method like this, you figure that out and solve already another problem. Isn't that awesome?

another use case for this. We switch over.

is what this company is doing. They actually put that 3D model into their learning management system, which you can put publicly on your website or you do it with username and password. And again, it explains Turn off main switch.

Using the main switch. the different things in how to do a different process. Disconnect the electrical connector under the primary fuel filter. And I have this now available on my web browser or again, same as what we did before, generate that QR code and have it on the device you have in your pocket, your phone, your tablet, your whatever. And again,

This is helping to get the information you need at the location you are to fix or use the problem you're having. And with complex machinery and equipment, that is just an ongoing problem as nobody wants to read the paper manuals anymore as they are not updated. They're physically somewhere, not where you need them and you waste a lot of time and energy.

questions so far.

Good. not now Markus, but as we get through this, I'd love to know some of the kind of financial cases, being financial people, you know, think that sometimes you like, look at the stuff and I'm like, it's cool. it'd be, I'd love to know like either some real world or what you've seen. and it doesn't have to be now. It could be at the end of the presentation, I'd love that. in, general, most of this, software applications run nowadays, per subscription. So it's always a.

couple of hundred dollars per user per month in kind of general with all the flexibility to of course cancel it whenever you want. And on this or other applications when a lot of 3D content is involved, there's a work to do from getting that

that CAD model out of your solid works and kind of beautify it and modify it so that it looks good in this application. And that is some work which either the vendor does or where we can help or where we can train you as an end user to do it if you have the people which are free and capable to do it.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think it does. then maybe what the ROI could be. Just coming from manufacturing, I love the example of, I forgot there was a big post here in my plant and I can't put this 12 by 12 machine there. But I'm sure there's a bunch of other like efficiency gains you can get, for example, because I don't have to call a service tech with the special knowledge out from Germany to go to, I don't know. None of it.

Visual support application, the whole ROI is to increase your, or to bring your unplanned downtime down and unplanned downtime of your machinery is the most expensive cost. What you have specifically, if you have a serial operation and one machine stops, the whole line stops and that's a big cost.

So in this case, as I always ask, what is your downtime number and cost? And if we are able to put that down 20 or 30%, how much would that be? And the cost of that solution would already pay for that.

In the Visao tool for visualization things, as I said, one use case is in marketing and sales. If you have a better way of showcasing your product to your client and you increase therefore your sales numbers, that's another ROI.

We have here another use case of 3D visualization here in this example, for example, on a trade show. Again, here the use cases, let's say you're a machine builder, you sell a big piece of equipment. In the past, machine builders put their big equipment on a trade show, but we all know this costs hundreds of thousands of dollars with the whole move and installation.

And you only can show one machine and not your whole portfolio. And a new way could be with a 3D, a special 3D LED wall, kind of like 20 feet by 10 feet. And you see these guys have this special glasses. They're kind of like the ones you use at the 3D movie theater. And then with this, can again,

visualize the whole content in 3D and see a piece of machinery. Let's watch how this could look like.

So again, you saw that big screen and that's how the image could look like where you fly through. You see here this kind of shadowed field. That's how it looks when you're not in the glasses and with the glasses you have the real 3D visualization. And again, it helps to showcase

complex machinery, some complex properties, often equipment in a very short time so that people are impressed and say, hey, I want to buy that.

Here we are. All right. Then there's another augmented reality use case and that is the process of manual assembly. Manual assembly is used for low quantity, high variation products where you have like a workbench environment, some

part boxes and traditionally a paperwork instruction, which tells the operator in how to put that thing together. The challenge is here that under the current economic circumstances, these people come and go, you have a high fluctuation, you have to always train them. Your overall quality goes down, that costs you a lot of money, the training costs you.

puts in flexibility in the production planning in as when you have higher production numbers, you want to put more people in, you first need to train them and all this different pains. And the solution to that is you put that magic box on top of your workbench. This has a video projector in it and a camera system and of course a little computer. And it actually projects the

work instructions step -by -step onto the table and onto the part. And let's see how that could look like. So the, again, that's the magic box. Here's the toolbox, the workstation. And we are looking now from the top to the bottom in an assembly process.

of this workpiece carrier. We did that here on the last IMTS. And here's a quick five S and how to orient everything and making sure all parts are in place. And with, just saw with the virtual button, the process was started and it showcases now here's a text and it tells us take this part and move it over there. And look what happened when the part is actually in place.

Magic happened, there was no pushing a button or any type of acknowledgement. The camera actually saw that the part is at the current location and it went to the next step telling the operator here was the text, sorry, the graphic isn't that great, but picking out a part out of this bin. So the operator grabs into it and we just saw the light changed. That means again, the camera saw that the operator put the

hand in the right bin, picking up the right part and going to the next step. And that's how we guide now the operator step -by -step, little video sequences explaining how to flip a part. And so a brand new operator with no training and built that thing. And we showcased this on different trade shows where we actually let visitors

building stuff without any introduction and say, just follow this guidance and you're able to put that thing together with of course, a hundred percent quality check in every step.

Next we see here a little assembly, some screws in and in the next step, is not a battery drill. Yep. That comes here to tighten it. You actually can hook up if you have automatic torque wrenches, you can connect that to that system to make sure that the specific torque values are made and all of that.

The system is also able to do a picture at the end of it. If you have a serial number, which you could scan with a barcode, you have actually full traceability. So you get a timestamp, a picture of your product when it's assembled. And if your end client complains about the product at one point of time, you at least can say, when we put it together, it was good. Then it looked like this.

So all good. Any questions to this particular application? What I could answer?

So that was one click too much.

Come on, here we are.

Okay, we're back.

All right, now let's jump into make reality for this. We're using Quest 3 headset. And in this application, we load a cat file into it and visualize it. Use cases for this could be engineering review. You can do that from different locations.

And just visualize a 3D model and talk about that for quality assembly, disassembly and so on. How that could that look like? Here's a quick video.

This is Sam.

The app comes preloaded with the MetaQuest 3 and the MetaQuest Pro.

It is possible to load your own model. At the end of the video, I show how this works.

The app is controlled by hand gestures only, no controller needed. You can move the object around in the room in mixed reality. You can zoom it, make it bigger, make it smaller. And with that special hand gesture, put it in explosion view, take individual parts out, and then magically move them all together. If you make the right...

hand gesture of course. That's a little learning curve.

and we got it. They have also a great help here on the right you see all the different hand gestures and a video instruction how to do things. In here we try the drawing feature again with different hand gestures you're able to draw in mixed reality and make for example annotations to your CAD file as you see here. That's pretty cool.

All right.

So as mentioned in the video and I'll share all those links with the presentation later with you. They're all on my YouTube channel. You can try it out yourself. Another application where we're pretty fast in jumping through the different use cases is actually the topic of technical training.

Technical training specifically again on machinery and complex equipment has its challenges. There's the old way of doing it with a lot of paper and let your people read manuals where the retention rate isn't that great when you have to read a lot of technical text without any pictures to it.

The, let's say the, the little better way of doing it is if you have videos and watch videos, the retention is a little better. But nowadays people use this magic device and maybe check out their Instagram status in between. Then again, the retention rate of the content is again, not that great. And then we come.

The highest level, what you can do right now is actually do technical training in virtual reality. There you put yourself into another world. You put that 3D model of that piece of equipment machinery in virtual reality. And in the third dimension, you can interact with that piece of machinery and you can guide an operator through a specific task and let them actually

do it like they would do it in real life with their hands. And that kind of creates the muscle memory and the highest retention rate. important thing is that you're then actually independent from any geographical location. So you don't need to do that technical training in front of that specific machine. You can do it in the office. You can do it.

wherever you want, where you have internet connection more or less. And you're also not defined by any timeline or any downtime to that piece of equipment to do the training. You can do whenever you want. How does that look like? There's another video on that.

Markus Wermel with Digitality. You know that guy already? present a solution for technical training in an industrial environment from our technology partner ADAR Solutions called ADAR Skills. We do this all on a MetaQuest 3 and the app is running on the glasses. Let's go!

See this beautiful generated workstation of a motor assembly station. Here's the part, the engine, HMI, some shelves. Let's scrap the part.

Take the pencil, we forgot to sweep it in the grease. Sweep it on the part, put the pencil back, place the cover on the engine block. What's next? Take the barcode scanner, scan the QR code, bring the scanner back, take a screw, put it in, take another screw, put it in, then take the Makita,

torque driver we have to hold until we have to get 100 percent. Same procedure again. Put the tool back, take the torque gun, torque it to a specific value both ways, place the tool back and we're done.

Pretty easy, or?

And again, pretty easy to set up. need that cat model of the machine. And then it takes a couple of hours to set up this specific workflow. then anybody can be trained on that. my last use case is what I did with the company Meyer. They have a subsidiary here in Atlanta. And recently they moved into a bigger space.

The challenge they had is they didn't have really good plans of the new building and they want to organize their manufacturing shop floor in a better way and have it also more efficient. And the traditional way was to just draw that all on a whiteboard and then build it and then see how it works. And then the CEO brought me in to data.

to that all in virtual reality and simulate it. So what we did is we generated a model of that new factory, imported CAD models of different pieces of machinery, what they had and draw new stuff where no CAD model was available into the room in three dimensions oriented all, made different versions out of it.

and then made a walkthrough in virtual reality. And on top of that, also check the performance of an assembly process again in virtual reality with the output of cycle time and ergonomics to kind of find the best way of how to orient everything. And the added value was according to that plan, we later built that out.

And it worked immediately and everybody was happy. In the next video, I show you that, that walk through in the individual world with everything I built there. In this example, this whole project took me about eight hours of working time from scratch to put that all together. the first, you saw the office area.

some shelves, here's the manufacturing area with the different work benches, some shipping area.

Even we have a model of the forklift in to kind of have the look and feel how that all works out with the new design. We showcased that then also to the German headquarter and there were kind of blown away in how we did it. And now everybody is happy with the new place, which works of course.

Awesome.

shouldn't click two times on the escape all the time. Nope. Sorry about that.

Come on. Here we are. And we are actually almost done. And we are good in time.

So this were now a couple of examples, what's all possible with immersive technology. Your next question is maybe what is next? In my point of view, of course, like with computers, always better hardware, faster, higher resolution, lighter. We see that already.

The MetaQuest 3, what I have here is about 500 bucks and I always say that the visual looks like HDTV. The Apple vision pro is around 3 ,500 bucks. Of course more expensive, but has a better processing power and the resolution is like 4k TV. So the quality is...

is much better, but of course you also pay a higher price. What I also see is the topic of IoT connectivity. So while you're in a mixed reality and you see this information around you, you actually can bring actual information from the outside. A use case here, if I'm in this room and walk around, if I see this light up there,

It could visualize the actual current or the actual temperature of that device in my point of view, which again, in the whole area of troubleshooting can help with additional information to troubleshoot that issue faster. And then of course it all goes towards the digital twin where you have a full realistic model of your

a piece in the digital world and the visualization both ways. And that only works with capable immersive technology in order to make everything faster, better and more efficient.

And there will be many more use cases out there to use this type of technology. Yeah. Here we come then already to the end. If you have any questions, you're happy to ask them to me. If you want to connect with me, I'm very active on LinkedIn, talking about all this different digitalization tools, use cases and stuff like that.

either find my name on LinkedIn or scan this code. And I just started my digitalitum podcast. Every two weeks is another episode. You find that through my website, or if you search for digitalitum on your podcast provider of choice, Apple, Spotify, you name it, you should be able to listen into that as well.

Hi, Markus, it's Linda here. Sorry I'm not on camera tonight. I do have couple of questions. So one, OK, so the magic little box that was sitting at the top of the assembly workstation. What if you are in a clean room, you are in a dark room, and you have to use, how do I explain this?

So we are an optical manufacturing company. design and manufacture optics. Optics go into many, many, many things. And let's just say you're putting it into a camera lens, a high -end camera lens or a microscope. You're in a clean room, you're in a dark space, you have one very high powered light shining because you have to make sure there's no imperfections in that optical lens. Excuse me.

How would that machine work in a dark space? I know it was a light space when you showed it. So first of all, the usage in clean rooms is no problem at all. I installed the systems already in a couple of different clean rooms for medical device assembly. So that's not a problem. The specific use case you have in a

darkroom that needs to be looked into further how the light of the projector affects the assembly. don't have an answer on that. That would be a one -on -one where we could elaborate deeper into that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Understood. My second question is, have you worked

with any clients that deal in the Department of Defense? And has there been any regulatory or compliance issues that you have come across? I haven't had use cases yet with the Department of Defense. And as all my products are from foreign providers, that's always kind of like a

a barrier of entry into the specific applications or use cases. Well, mean, okay. So even defense industry in Europe, right? So Germany defense industry, any points at all? I know a couple of use cases where they use it as well. Yes. So it's used in Germany, in German.

defense applications, but so far, I haven't really entered into the US Department of Defense. Because you don't have a US passport, I'm assuming that's why you're not a US national yet. But okay, so let's just take the case one step further. So let's just say you're uploading a work instruction, and the work instruction has the client who is a customer of a defense industry.

And those work instructions are quite classified or confidential. So where, where are they stored? Like how do you get around the security? This is all a local system. So there's no cloud connection. All is handled computer wise on a, on a local computer on that device. So therefore

specifically for classified things, you're on the good side of things in my point of view. Everything under the umbrella of support that needs to be then defined, what can be viewed by an outsider and whatnot in order to help and troubleshoot. I think that's where the specific questions then come.

Yep, agreed. Yeah, there's quite a few vendors out there in this type of space. I guess one of the things I missed in your presentation is what makes you stand out or what makes you special, maybe one or two highlights as to what sets you apart from other competitors in this space. We, with our business, focus specifically on small, medium manufacturers.

and help them out with my experience I have in the field working on machining and production projects also in that industry. And I'm just familiar in how that all works. In my point of view, also small medium manufacturers don't have the big budgets and the special people to focus on everything under the umbrella of digitalization.

And I kind of feel just from a general point of view, they're behind on things and need help from external third party clients like me and others. And the big guys in the market, the big consulting firms, they have too high of rates for small manufacturers who can afford that.

My hourly rate is not at 2000 bucks. I get Deloitte. I wish, but yeah, you know. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. for your questions. Any other questions?

So like I said at the beginning, we will distribute the presentation in the next couple of days as well. This was recorded, so it will be on the Fang YouTube channel at some point, maybe in a couple of weeks. And then also you will just be able to review it there again. And then for sure here's Markus's information if you want to reach out to him, if you have some additional questions which maybe are more tailored to your individual needs.

and you don't want to bring them up necessarily in this larger crowd.

Then thank you all. Thank you, Markus. Any closing words?

Yeah, as I said, if you have questions, reach out to me. I'm always happy to answer even the so -called stupid questions. There are no stupid questions out there. Digitalization is a complex topic. It involves a lot of different things and I'm here to you and your company on the digitalization journey.

which is not just a way to just digitalize, it's to make you better, faster, more efficient and provide more value to your client.

Thank you. Thank you all. And then thanks, Markus. You all have a great evening. Hope to see you soon. Bye bye. Bye, guys. Markus.