Corporate

Ford Pilots New Siemens Software Using Google Earth Technology to Virtually Navigate Assembly Plants and Enhance Global Manufacturing Collaboration

By Tim Egloff

In December of last year, Ford Motor Company held a media forum at their global headquarters in Dearborn, MI. to showcase a pilot program using new technology built by Siemens PLM Software which utilizes the Google Earth infrastructure.  This innovative solution can allow Ford’s manufacturing engineers to easily communicate and collaborate around assembly processes to foster the globalization of standards and best practices across their production footprint.

Janice Goral, manager, Ford Vehicle Operations Manufacturing Engineering spoke briefly about the possibilities Ford sees in this type of technology and how Ford Motor Company continuously searches for innovative solutions to improve collaboration and efficiency within and between their production sites.


Marty Smets, engineer, Ford Ergonomics Lab gave a live demonstration of the technology showing the power of this solution in providing a familiar interface that allows the ergonomics team to easily share information about assembly operations.  He showed an example of how the technology could be used to solve problems which typically require engineers to access several systems for information or even travel to a plant to resolve. 

You can access the information shared from the media forum on Ford’s media website.

For more information from Siemens PLM Software on the IntoSite solution, visit the IntoSite product page.

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/news/ford-pilots-new-siemens-software-using-google-earth-technology-to-virtually-navigate-assembly-plants-and-enhance-global-manufacturing-collaboration/