Improvement of manufacturing processes with virtual reality-based CIP workshops

The Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) is a well-established method to improve manufacturing processes. A typical CIP workshop, carried out by a group of workers and engineers directly in production, often causes unwanted downtimes. Furthermore, improvements have to be realised without reliability testing. Virtual Reality (VR) provides a powerful means to support CIP workshops. This paper introduces the concept of a VR-based CIP workshop. User interfaces are proposed to integrate additional elements, e.g. findings of augmented reality, into VR. This allows meeting specific demands of different participants involved in a CIP workshop. The proposed concept is validated based on an industrial use case.