BMW uses NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise and Isaac Sim to build digital twins of its factories

Overview

BMW, which produces 2.5 million cars a year with 99 percent of them customized before purchase, uses NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to simulate its factories in real time as a photorealistic digital twin, connecting applications like Bentley Microstation and Autodesk Revit. BMW also employs NVIDIA Isaac Sim to train delivery robots using synthetic data generation with domain randomization, and NVIDIA Fleet Command to orchestrate robots and machines across its production network.

The challenge

BMW produces 2.5 million cars every year, and customers tailor 99 percent of those cars before purchase; with over 30 factories worldwide, collecting accurate operational data using various software platforms became challenging and time-consuming, leaving data prone to inaccuracies and discrepancies. Programming a robot's system for multiple environmental scenarios can take weeks or months, and optimizing a factory's reconfiguration to find the most efficient and safest path for workers can take months to implement and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The solution

BMW uses NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to simulate many aspects of an entire factory in real time and produce a digital twin designed to accurately reflect a physical object, connecting applications like Bentley Microstation and Autodesk Revit through Omniverse Connectors so teams can collaborate on the same models in real time from any location. BMW used NVIDIA-Certified HPE Apollo 6500 servers equipped with NVIDIA RTX 8000 GPUs to host Omniverse Kit, with a single lightweight server hosting Omniverse Nucleus, the central database hub that reformats files from other DCC apps into Universal Scene Description (USD) format. BMW employs NVIDIA Isaac Sim to train delivery robots and improve material flow in production, generating synthetic data with domain randomization across millions of photorealistic simulated images with varied textures, orientations and lighting conditions. NVIDIA Fleet Command software lets BMW workers securely orchestrate robots and machines across the factory.

Reported business value

Omniverse Enterprise allows BMW's production designers and planners to use the same virtual environment as robotic teams using Isaac Sim, eliminating the need to rebuild environments across alternate simulation software. NVIDIA Fleet Command lets BMW control and update robots and machines remotely while uploading sensor data back into Omniverse, synchronizing physical and virtual environments for more informed decisions. As BMW AG Board Member for Production Milan Nedeljkovic put it, "Omniverse greatly enhances the precision, speed, and consequently the efficiency of our planning processes."