NCR & Tech Soft 3D

The Challenge

NCR are a global leader in the manufacturing of enterprise technology for restaurants, retailers and banks. They are a global POS (Point of Sales) hardware and software provider for retail and hospitality, and the number one provider of multi-vendor ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) equipment. Headquartered in Atlanta, USA, NCR has over 34,000 employees in 160 countries.

NCR came to Tech Soft 3D with a problem of how to improve their design process, where they use PTC’s Creo and Windchill products, to enable them to ramp up production in their plants. One of the roadblocks for them had always been that manufacturing and services didn’t get involved during CAD design, due to lack of technical expertise.

NCR wanted to find a way to get the manufacturing and service teams to give their feedback on designs prior to committing to buying prototype parts. Additionally, the head office in the USA asked them to show how they were trying to innovate in their design process.

VR was seen as a tool that they could utilize that would make CAD data a lot more accessible to non-design engineers.

Their process prior to using SpinFire XR was to physically manufacture multiple versions of the product to conduct their design review, before sending the final design to production. NCR decided to replace the physical model of the first iteration in the design review process (Model A) with a digital alternative.

Kenny Cruickshanks, Technical Manager at NCR explained “We chose VR as it ticked all the boxes for what we needed; It is relatively cheap, easy to install hardware, a user interface that didn’t require great technical knowledge to operate, excellent visualization of the products we were designing, as well as a wow factor when visitors come in.”

Streamlining the Design Review Process

NCR had first been made aware of SpinFire XR when they saw a video presentation online from a trade show where Tech Soft 3D detailed what they were doing in the VR space

“We had previously partnered with another firm, but it became clear that they had never done this type of thing before and were looking for ‘guinea pigs’ ” Kenny stated, “Tech Soft 3D already had a track record in this area and what they presented was very close to what we were looking for. Once we set up our initial call it became clear that Tech Soft 3D would be a very good fit for what we were looking to do.”

They had also already made the decision to use the HTC VIVE as their headset, which was a factor in why they chose Tech Soft 3D: “Tech Soft 3D already had a track record in this area and what they presented was very close to what we were looking for... it became clear that Tech Soft 3D would be a very good fit for what we were looking to do.”

With SpinFire XR’s design review experience, NCR are able to view and interrogate their products which have been designed using CAD in XR, without having to produce a physical model.

SpinFire XR allows colleagues located all over the world to take part in the same design review session from their different locations. So, although the SpinFire XR is installed at the site in Scotland, designers at NCR sites in the US, Philippines, Hungary and India are able to join their colleagues remotely for the design reviews of the digital prototype.

Tech Soft 3D Consultants went on site for a day for the installation and the software was implemented straight away, which enabled NCR to quickly start to achieve the cost and process benefits, in-line with their specified timescales.

As the XR suite has the mechanism to integrate to NCR’s existing IT systems, they are able to put additional, non-CAD data and metadata into their experiences in order to give the user a richer augmented view of the CAD data that they are looking at.

The primary benefit to NCR from using SpinFire XR has been cost savings. By taking away the costs of having to build a physical mock-up for the first design review cycle, and the materials and people time associated with this, NCR are expecting to have saved up to £390,000 in their first year. This will have given them a ROI of under 2 months.

Additional benefits identified from using SpinFire XR include:

• Process Improvements – time saving in building and test stages

• Reduction in errors

• A greener process – no scrappage from the physical production of Model A and reduction in travel costs

With SpinFire XR being device neutral, a range of devices can be used for the same experiences, and even at the same time during a collaboration session. As a result, it is able to accommodate NCR’s future requirements as they develop their use of Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality technologies. It will future-proof NCR against being locked into specific devices in a dynamic technology marketplace.

From proof of concept to working with the devices in the different experiences within their everyday processes, NCR summarize their experience of using SpinFire XR:

“Tech Soft 3D have been a good partner to work with. Their communication is good and they generally meet any deadline that is set. I would definitely recommend Tech Soft 3D as a partner.”