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Virtual review meetings: A study of how to improve the review meetings at Virtual manufacturing
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Social Sciences, Technology and Arts.
2020 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (professional degree), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This project is a master thesis executed in Gothenburg for 20 weeks during the end of 2020 as part of the education at Lulea technical university in collaboration with Virtual manufacturing. Virtual manufacturing is a company of 40 employees that supports their customers with production-based services such as helping with expansions, layouts and improving workstations. The context for this thesis is the review meetings of products, CAD models, that are reviewed by the customers and the constructors at Virtual manufacturing. At the construction department there are 2-3 employees located in Gothenburg while the customer is located at their company site. The meetings are conducted online. The objective of this project is to create a method for how Virtual manufacturing can use virtual reality (VR) in their review meetings and the aim is to improve the communication and collaboration at the review meetings. The problem is that design flaws slip through the construction phase, making it necessary to make last minute changes when the product is manufactured or forcing Virtual manufacturing to rebuild details of the product at the customer site. This adds time for finishing the product, adding expenses for the company and stress for the employees. Four research questions have been answered in this report. The first question was: What is needed for the solution to be sustainable for the employees? It was answered using information from six semi structured interviews with production, construction, project leader and the manager of the company, three observations of review meetings with customer and an observation at one of the customer sites, where a product did not meet the ergonomic standard, was conducted. Programs used by the constructors was learned and theory regarding organizational change and human centred design was used for understanding problems arising. Findings showed that the solution needed to be easy to use, be accessible from different locations and be time-efficient to use. The second research question was: What needs to be improved for better communication at the review meeting? It was answered using information from a workshop with the constructors and by reviewing theory about communication, collaboration, and boundary objects: Findings suggested that size estimation of the product needed to be improved as well as the structure of how to save and organize feedback from the meetings. The third research question was: Will extended reality (virtual, augmented, or mixed) improve the review meetings? It was answered by reviewing theories about extended reality (XR) as well as an interview with professor Wallergård at Lund’s university: VR was deemed to be the best version of XR for improving the review meetings as a complementary tool. The final research question was: How can VR be used for improving the meeting? It was answered using theories from earlier research questions with an addition of articles of VR as well as benchmarking, a workshop with the constructors and both a workshop and semi-structured interviews with four developers at Virtual manufacturing: VR could aid the ergonomic evaluation by letting the participants experiencing the model in full scale. The conclusion was to change CAD software from IronCAD to Fusion 360, reducing time for preparation and improve the possibility to save feedback, document decisions made in a shared document with the customer to improve communication, and slowly implement VR as a tool for reviewing ergonomics. Starting with a small setup where the customer enters the VR environment and share their screen with the constructor. A method for how to conduct the meetings and how to implement the changes are suggested in the last chapter of the report. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 53
National Category
Interaction Technologies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-93296OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-93296DiVA, id: diva2:1699663
External cooperation
Virtual Manufacturing
Educational program
Industrial Design Engineering, master's level
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2022-09-28 Created: 2022-09-28 Last updated: 2022-09-28Bibliographically approved

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