Lutz Beck, Chief Information Officer, Daimler Truck North America

Lutz Beck is the Chief Information Officer at Daimler Truck North America (DTNA), North America's leading commercial vehicle manufacturer. In his role, Lutz is actively transforming the organization by implementing the IT strategy, "Building the Intelligent Company," and by leading DTNA's digital transformation efforts. He values disruption, innovation, and changing the game.

As part of our digital transformation strategy, we focus on utilizing Augmented and Virtual Reality technology for our customers, dealers, and technicians. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality offer the ability to learn and practice in a safe and repeatable environment on demand. The physical environment is replicated to give users the same experience as being on the line without physically shutting down a station for training. Mistakes in this process can be dangerous for new users and cost manufacturing a significant amount of scrap material. Leveraging Virtual Reality to alleviate these challenges and offer an alternative method for training gives technicians the skills they need without the risk.

DTNA also utilizes the technology in our sales order process, where users can choose and experience truck options, features, and enhancements they want on their trucks. The overarching "offering" that Immersive has created is a custom virtual reality and mixed reality experience for customer education on our products. This shows an example of using the technology to explain our new parts ordering process through Excelerator. Still, you can expand that to creating experiences for tradeshows and events on Autonomous or Electric technology in our trucks. Our on-site virtual reality labs, where we host customer visits to experience our products virtually.

 The physical environment is replicated to give users the same experience as being on the line without physically shutting down a station for training 

An example would be the Logging Council visit, where we had them come to our campus and visualize our engineering CAD data for our most popular logging truck. Another project example would be an experience we created for the Dealer Event in Las Vegas 2020, where we had the interior of the new 42N available for dealers to view using VR headsets. This was long before any information was released about the new truck, but made possible due to the technology. We showed customers development content and got their feedback.

One exciting feature AR/VR offers is the ability to see hidden features under the surface of our vehicles, such as showing internal systems that otherwise are not visible when looking at a finished truck. We can highlight steering motors, braking systems, wiring, internal batteries, and more through advanced technology.

Using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality significantly expands our opportunities in how we sell, train, showcase, and engage with customers, dealers, and technicians on our products. We use the technology to enhance the experience throughout the lifetime of our trucks, from sales customization and product feature information to creating a safer environment for technicians to work on repairs and keep our customers up and running as much as possible; it allows us to keep the world moving.