Rapid Prototyping Labs or Protolabs is a Wipro-initiative to help customers build and test proof-of-concepts with emerging and next-generation technologies in an accelerated manner. It offers a forum to open up innovation-oriented conversations with multiple stakeholders from customer organizations. These conversations can then be used to seed ideas, understand customer needs and pain points, talk about the art of the possible with emerging tech, create relevant experiments, and understand business better. These conversations later evolve into “experiments” which finally take the shape of a “full- fledged solution”. Protolabs thereby enable immersive and participative ideation workshops with customers to design solutions for complex challenges with greater speed.
Wipro has setup Protolabs in Mountain View, California, USA and Bangalore, India. The labs consist of hybrid infrastructure of high-end lab servers, public cloud, and teams with expertise and skillsets spanning across a host of emerging technologies like Interactive Experience (iX), Artificial Intelligence, IoT/Edge Computing, Robotics & Drones, 5G and Quantum Computing.
Specialized labs, expert teams, and rapid prototyping process offer these key value propositions:
- Low risk, high speed validation of ideas
- Ideas contextualized to customer
- Prototypes delivered in weeks, not months
- Globally distributed labs with local as well as global operations
- Expertise across a wide range of emerging technologies
- Ready-to-deploy teams
- Engagement with global innovation ecosystem
Lab infrastructure available on demand to perform experiments
An experiment is the 1st step toward a solution for a unique business problem, contextualized to a specific customer with an approximate timeline of 2-4 weeks. An experiment is a collaborative effort between Wipro and the customer organization. Its outcome is a proof-of-concept presentation to the customer, demonstration of tech prowess, and innovative approach to address business problem. Wipro’s Protolabs are well equipped with the latest hardware and software to perform these experiments.
- Electronics design: Circuit design workstations, PCB printing/prototyping machines
- Mechanical: 3D printing machines, fabrication tools
- Robotics: Interaction robots/cobots/industrial robots (UR5, Kinova, Nao, Kuka)
- AR/VR Gear: Oculus, VIVE, Hololens, Magic Leap, Realwear
- Drone technology
- Specialized cameras for hyperspectral imaging, LIDARs, depth sensing cameras
- Simulator for autonomous vehicle testing
Engagement model geared toward accelerated innovation
Our low friction rapid prototyping approach helps to accelerate innovation opportunities for customers. Below is how a typical engagement would flow:
- Emerging technology use case provided by customer or jointly by Wipro and the customer team
- 4-8 weeks for proof of concept/experimentation: Prototyping team consists of technology experts, domain experts and subject matter experts from Wipro & Minimal customer interactions
- Completed deliverables are demonstrated to customer for stakeholder engagement
- Support/knowledge transfer from the Protolabs team for development of full-fledged solutions
Leveraging the partner ecosystem
Wipro has partnered with several organizations with the objective of driving ‘Open Innovation’ at customer organizations. Protolabs leverage this strong ecosystem for added value.
- Collaboration with ecosystem of technology companies, start-ups, research institutions, open innovation brokers, innovation intermediaries, innovation teams from other corporates an SMEs
- Joint solutions and customer POCs with start-ups and major technology providers
- Strategic tie-ups with key partners and start-ups for training, technical support and early technology access
How Protolabs can help customers in the Oracle ecosystem
- As organizations find ways to keep their daily operations intact during a global pandemic, they have started allowing some critical staff to return to offices, while establishing stringent guidance for social distancing and mask etiquette. In some manufacturing organizations, government officials inspect periodically to ensure employers and employees are following safety guidelines. These organizations need a solution that can help them ensure compliance.
- Wipro’s Protolab can use computer vision techniques with AI capabilities, integrated to Oracle HCM Cloud solutions to ensure employee safety. Intelligent vision can identify any violation of social distancing and employees without mask, and can automatically log a health and safety incident in Oracle’s HCM Cloud system, along with details of department, location, type of incident and send out notifications to relevant stakeholders to take appropriate action and bring it to a logical closure.
- Majority of businesses handle significant volume of documents on a daily basis – like invoices, medical records, resumes etc. Today, we have multiple applications that can be used to digitize any manual document, however, interpreting the content of document, and deriving useful information from a large document is an area under exploration.
- Wipro’s Protolab worked with a large staffing firm on an AI and ML based solution, which handles large volume of resumes daily. At 1st level, staffing consultants used to manually read and triage the resume and pass it to specific recruiters for shortlisting and next steps. Wipro’s solution eliminated the 1st step of triaging the resumes. Integrating this AI solution with Oracle HCM Cloud’s recruiting module can take the solution to the next level, where triaged resumes can be further screened and stacked in the order of relevance, significantly reducing recruiting team’s time for resume screening.
- A common problem in inventory management across organizations is the scenario of different products/variants of a product sharing the same SKU (item identification number). This potentially leads to incorrect packing and inaccurate inventory tracking.
- Using Protolab’s computer vision techniques and AI, we can help customers solve the problem of incorrect packing of items with different properties but same SKU. The solution’s integration with Oracle’s Inventory Management can sync stock levels in real- time with sales channel.
- It’s a very strenuous activity for warehouse workers to keep on moving racks to fetch items ordered by customers. For customers with large inventory and warehouses, this task becomes even more daunting and error prone. Autonomous mobile robots can remove such physical tasks out of the workers’ lives and help them focus more on other order fulfillment tasks that require human intervention and improve customer experience.
- Wipro’s Protolab can help customers in automating warehouse management activities with a robotics solution integrated with Oracle Warehouse Management, which optimizes material flows and resources usage, leading to maximized labor and space utilization
- Today’s smart factories need sensors that can monitor different aspects of the working environment to guide workers accordingly. 5G holds the potential to meet these needs of the manufacturers. With its high capacity, wireless flexibility and low-latency performance, 5G can help them meet challenges like gathering operation intelligence to increase productivity and decrease downtime.
- Wipro’s Protolab can help organizations experience 5G benefits using connected sensors which can channel real time information about equipment performance, ranging from vibration to noise data, integrated with the power of Oracle Manufacturing Cloud, which delivers efficiencies through supply chain materials management, cost management, embedded enterprise quality management, and analytics, helping improve production efficiencies while reducing costs.
Contact Us to schedule a discussion with our experts to understand how Wipro Protolabs can help accelerate innovation for you.
