MACFARLANE Packaging has created a “mixed reality” packaging experience for customers at the firm’s Innovation Lab.
The lab, based in Milton Keynes, will use Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed reality headsets to merge the real and virtual worlds, allowing customers to visualise new packaging concepts in a real-world environment.
Customers will put on a headset and ‘walk’ through their packaging operation. The HoloLens equipment can also be transported to a customer’s premises to visualise any potential changes to their actual environment.
The headsets offer customers the chance to visualise full scale 3D holograms in the real world including, for example, pack station designs, packing lines, infill machinery and optimisation of palletisation, transportation and storage spaces.
The first customer to use the new headsets, which will be launched in February, will be retailer Selfridges. Macfarlane is working with Selfridges and their fulfilment partner, DHL, to redesign their packing area.
Macfarlane Packaging director Donna Lynch said, “These new Microsoft HoloLens headsets will further enhance the experience for our customers, helping us to convert our customers’ packaging challenges into ideas and tangible solutions. Our Innovation Lab has been designed to ensure that there are no bounds to the imagination when seeking out smart solutions for our customers and with these new headsets we can also take a mixed reality experience to a customer’s premises as we will do with Selfridges next month.”
Richard Garratt, technical design manager at the Innovation Lab added, “This is exciting technology with many new advantages for our customers. We are inviting companies to the Innovation Lab to experience Hololens and see how it can be used to optimise their packaging operations. With this approach we can go beyond a 2D visual and present our solutions in three dimensions using Microsoft’s new hologram technology. We can make smarter decisions together and reach the approval stage much faster.”
Macfarlane Packaging will be demonstrating the technology at Packaging Innovations.
