Meta's Reality Labs, which develops virtual and augmented reality hardware, uses Instrumental's manufacturing AI and data platform to speed up new product introductions, according to an Instrumental case study published in May 2024. Steve McClure, senior director of hardware engineering, faced seven new product introductions a year, first-of-its-kind technology, aggressive schedules with limited engineering resources and remote manufacturing partners that slowed iteration.
His team used Instrumental to oversee seven programs with more than 60 imaging stations, which capture images and video of the hardware at key assembly steps to create a complete traceable record for each unit. Instrumental's Discover AI looks for anomalies in those images so engineers spend their time fixing problems rather than searching for them, and when a defect is found, the team uses visual search and AI-enabled measurements to reach the root cause faster. This avoided extra design-of-experiments runs and test units to determine root causes.
Meta uses Instrumental across several Reality Labs programs, including Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and other augmented reality products, and it is part of the workflow of its product design, design for excellence, quality, systems industrial engineering and battery teams. "In the absence of Instrumental, I don't learn about issues until a test fails," said Scott Rutschman, a product design engineer.
For one year the case study reports 186 users, more than 900 engineering weeks saved across the seven programs and a sixfold return on investment. "Instrumental saved us 900+ engineering weeks, a core metric for Meta, unlocking capacity across our hardware and software teams," McClure said.
Details
- City
- Menlo Park
- Organization
- Meta Platforms
- Continent
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Category