One more: PTC acquires AR agency TWNKLS

When so many conferences happen at the same time, news blizzards also happen.

PTC announced today that it has acquired PTC TWNKLS, a European company that creates tailor-made augmented reality (AR) applications and offers related services. PTC says the acquisition will “accelerate PTC’s AR strategy as well as enable customers to realize faster time-to-value. With expertise in Vuforia, a world-class creative staff, and experience implementing enterprise AR solutions, the award-winning TWNKLS will help strengthen and expand PTC’s industrial AR offerings to more effectively meet the needs of its customer base”.

As you know, I’m at HxGN LIVE where I just sat in on a session where a PPM customer talked about creating and using a digital twin. VR and AR were somewhat unforeseen benefits of their digital twin strategy — once they realized how much simpler communication about complicated things is, when you can all see it, experiencing it with VR was a no-brainer addition to their program. AR is next on their list of things to do.

PTC isn’t wrong when it says that “across all industrial use cases including manufacturing, engineering, service and training, AR is improving productivity, reducing waste, and increasing worker safety and compliance. AR empowers organizations to digitally transform their products, processes, and people.”

Where they say AR, we can perhaps say VR/AR since VR is much more accessible to people just starting out with this stuff — but it’s absolutely correct to say that tools that enable this type of visual communication can save time and money, prevent confusion and improve safety.