How AR/VR contributes to greater resource availability

Innovation & New Technologies

New technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are revolutionising and optimising the workplace every day. Training programs are more streamlined, require less time and less supervision by existing workers, and facilities and product manufacturing can be studied, reworked and optimised without having to have your human resources travel miles to see them in person. VR and AR have the ability to eliminate skill gaps, prevent knowledge loss and to null the issue of distance between your workers and the manufacturing lines of the prototypes and products they work on.

Defining AR and VR

AR redefines how information is consumed by overlaying digital content and analytics on the real world. It can present step-by-step procedural guidance, operator set up, change over instructions, edit workflows, processes and much more. VR creates a fully immersive experience. Instead of overlaying data and analytics onto the real world as AR does, it generates a simulated environment. Through it you can virtually visit a manufacturing line from afar, or examine a plant still under construction, without having to send your staff, your human resources on-site. The scope to maximise on the availability and productivity of your human resources is monumental, if AR and VR are correctly harnessed to do so.

Leading innovation using new technologies

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Leading innovation using new technologies

Closing the skill gap with AR

Deloitte reports that in the next 10 years, 2.7 million baby boomers working in the manufacturing industry will retire, taking their skill and expertise with them. It is therefore crucial that the onboarding of new experts, the next generation of manufacturing human resources moves as quickly and efficiently as possible. In the past, this process has required copious amounts of time and money.

Utilising AR in this process can make it much more efficient. Instead of running through processes and wasting hours documenting every aspect of it hours later, engineers can passively create AR experiences. This makes use of advanced tech, sensors and computer vision for example, to record audio and visual assets, automatically documenting the plant and its processes. The AR can then essentially train the new engineers, presenting controls and scenarios through the digital visualisation. This frees up time for your existing experts to continue their work, whilst at the same time more quickly and cost-efficiently onboarding new ones.

Tangible increases in resource availability

As reported by Shelby Hegy of Control Engineering, there has already been very tangible improvements to both training and assembly times thanks to VR and AR. Utilising AR, an anonymous large scale aerospace and defense company in the UK adopted AR technology, and were able to create and distribute guided work instructions at 0.1x of the cost it normally would. They trained their workers with an increase of 30-40% in efficiency, and halved their assembly times.

Summary

The early birds have captured the worm, but that’s not so say that those adopting AR and VR today will miss out completely on the meal. Organisations who already have have shown that they are useful tools in bridging skills gaps as well as rewriting the ways in which workers are trained, on boarded, and how retiring workers are off boarded. Not only do VR and AR streamline and ensure that knowledge and documentation is not lost in these processes, but they have been demonstrably shown to improve productivity and safety in the workplace.