Macfarlane Packaging, the UK distributor of protective packaging materials, has teamed up with Microsoft to bring a “mixed reality” experience for its customers using the Macfarlane Packaging Innovation Lab.
Located in Milton Keynes, it will introduce Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed reality headsets in February. Mixed reality merges the real and virtual worlds allowing Macfarlane’s customers the ability to visualise new packaging concepts in a real-world environment where actual and digital objects co-exist and can interact with each other. Customers using the Innovation Lab will wear the HoloLens headset and walk through their packaging operation with Macfarlane’s packaging experts on hand to identify cost savings opportunities and efficiencies during the process.
The HoloLens equipment is fully transportable and can also be used on site in a customer’s premises to visualise any potential changes to their actual environment. The headsets offer opportunities for customers 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 next month will be Selfridges. Macfarlane is working with the retailer and its fulfilment partner, DHL, to redesign its packing area and improve productivity.
Donna Lynch, Director from Macfarlane Packaging 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.”
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