- There are no pre-existing assets to create step-by-step instructions
- Work and training instructions are either non-existent or poor quality
- Relevant CAD data or documented procedures are unavailable
- There are highly-regulated standards for safety and compliance
Let’s talk about how technical documentation impacts field service procedures, high costs of inaccurate technical information, the root causes of service failures, and how to achieve high field service productivity and effectiveness.
Many of the fundamental issues in service occur due to inaccurate service information and technical documentation that is difficult to understand.
We have all been in a situation, at least once, that involved failure to deliver a service as promised. Why? It’s because all brands and businesses make promises! But the truth is… service issues happen
When service fails to deliver on promises, or a buyer experiences poor customer service, the result almost always ends with lost customers, canceled subscriptions, and tarnished brand reputation.
The impact of a service failure can be devastating. Let’s talk about the root causes impacting service issues and failures
The impacts of service issues
The greatest influence on service almost always has to do with one thing; technical documentation. By technical documentation I am referring to tech pubs, standard operating procedure documents, service instructions, maintenance manuals, guides, work instructions, procedures, bulletins, etc.
I’m talking about anything and everything that is provided to help assist and guide service technicians. Many of the fundamental issues in service occur due to technical documentation, let’s talk about why.
Technical Documentation and Field Service
Today many field service and manufacturing organizations rely on traditional time-intensive methods to develop and deploy technical documentation such as service procedures, work instructions, guides, manuals, etc.
But the fact is – oftentimes the tech pubs, guides, and manuals that are created, aren’t even read (or in some cases even used) by field service representatives for which they were designed!
In addition, technician instruction manuals and documentation designed to be used in field service are often out-of-date. This is due to the high maintenance and distribution costs to create, maintain and produce continually up-to-date field service documentation.
This issue compounds as products become more and more complex in response to ever increasing customer demands for innovation and customization.
This rise in complex products has resulted in complex service and maintenance procedures, affecting and influencing inaccuracies in technical writing and documentation. As the demand for complex maintenance and service procedures increase, technician efficiency decreases due to more time being spent searching for the correct service information in a format that can be used on the field. This often results in repair and maintenance delays.
When service technicians encounter unfamiliar problems and don’t have reliable service information to solve a problem, the need for repeat service visits increases. There are many major negative consequences from these situations.
For example, a customer might experience equipment downtime. This downtime impacts both the service provider, as it inflates the cost of service, as well as the customer, as they lose productivity.
The high costs of inefficient field service
For you, as a service provider, the consequences of poor service information, complex products, and poor technician efficiency can drastically impact your costs of service in a number of ways.
For starters, let’s assume you work with service contracts. Service contracts often contain elements such as equipment up-time clauses. In the case you were to unintentionally breach one of these ‘set clauses’, it’s fair to assume the organization would face undesirable penalties and costs.
Take a deep breath. All is not lost. The added costs from inefficient service strategies are completely avoidable!
Repeat field service visits also drastically increase business costs. Multiple repeat visits to service products quickly increase costs and become very expensive. This is why many organizations seek to avoid repeat service visits at all cost.
A rarely considered cost-driver for service stems from difficulties comprehending poorly written, inaccessible, and out-of-date technical documentation.
When service technicians are unable to easily identify which spare parts are required, they often order multiple parts in hope that one will be correct. This results in high part returns, and handling costs. Not to mention, the need to hold more parts in stock from inflated orders (the bull whip effect), also affects parts inventory.
The skills gap is also increasing the cost of inefficient service.
“Faced with continuing economic expansion and retirement of baby boomers, the US manufacturing industry is looking at a potential shortage of 2.4 million workers in the next decade.” – 2018 Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute skills gap study
To put it in perspective, a large portion of our workforce is approaching retirement soon. This is causing the skills gap to widen. With the loss of tribal knowledge, access to consumable expert knowledge becomes increasingly necessary.
New and inexperienced technicians have repeat service visits which cause an organization to face higher training costs, while overburdened experienced staff members are forced to train and pick up the slack for newer employees.
All of these things impact customer satisfaction. These conditions damage service reputations for both an organizations product, as well as, service contracts. Most importantly, all of these scenarios impact an organizations ability to retain customers and garner repeat business.
Sometimes you need to break down the barriers between product development and operations.
How to gain high service productivity and effectiveness
In order to obtain high technician productivity and effectiveness you must re-evaluate your service methods and procedures
Increase technician comprehension with accurate AR work instructions
To increase technician comprehension, look into concepts to create accurate, in-context augmented reality (AR) work instructions that overlay digital information onto a physical product.
Establish accurate part identification
Consider implementing accurate AR experiences so part identification, replacement and ordering are easy and accurate.
Enable remote real-time work instructions
Enable expert technicians to give remote, real-time guidance on physical objects using assisted reality tools like Vuforia Chalk.
All of these help service organizations create a more flexible, agile, workforce. These changes result in increased equipment uptime and productivity. They result in happier customers and more empowered workers.
Most importantly – you can start implementing these benefits today. All the technology currently exists. We would love to work with you and your organization to understand your service operations goals and map a path forward.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Assisted Reality for digital work instructions have become a growth driver, or at least consideration, for many industries.
Yet moving everything from paper or ‘digital hard-copy’ to digital AR experiences seems to be a daunting task for large and small organizations alike.
The truth is, there are many ways to incorporate augmented reality into service, but many of these can disrupt current processes and be a challenge to implement.
This is why, our company (EAC Product Development Solutions), developed and created an easier way to make service information more accurate, relevant and accessible.
It allows you to easily deliver the content behind AR instructions, manuals, and guides to digital devices such as tablets, head-mounted displays, or cell phones.
Implementing AR for service should be easy. That is why we created a better way.
The tool is called AR Instruct – It easily connects traditional technical publication content to the AR world.
Digital Work Instructions & AR Instruct
AR Instruct enables “hands-free” execution of work instructions using the latest immersive technology including: Augmented Reality, Assisted Reality, and Mixed Reality.
Our AR solution works as an AR publishing engine that repurposes existing S1000D, Arbortext, or XML, technical publication content and simplifies the transition to hands-free and mobile paperless instructions.
The best part? AR Instruct requires no content re-authoring and no content rebuilding. It’s really that easy.
AR Instruct can even dynamically publish up-to-date work instructions from the latest document revision on your server. This will ensure accuracy, compliance, and quality.
Watch the video below to get a quick and easy introduction to AR Instruct.
How does AR Instruct work?
A Service Engineer scans a work order QR code to locate relevant service procedures.
Our AR publishing engine, AR Instruct, retrieves XML content and dynamically formats it for AR viewing. This requires no manual publishing at all.
Using a digital device like a Vuzix or RealWear, the service engineer can navigate the AR content hands-free with voice commands.
The Service Engineer can inspect each associated technical graphic related to the product.
The Service Engineer can also expand any technical graphic or content for enhanced viewing.
With the AR Instruct graphic viewer, the Service Engineer can pan and zoom any image by using voice commands. All buttons he or she sees are “readable” as voice commands.
Using voice commands, the Service Engineer can navigate links to cross-referenced steps or procedures.
Once the Service Engineer is done with the cross-referenced content, he or she would be able to return to where they left off in the original service procedure.
When all steps are complete, the AR Instruct software notifies the Service Engineer that the procedure is done and all steps are recorded as complete.
The Service Engineer exits back to the bar code scanner to begin a new work order or procedure.
It’s really that easy.
If you are looking to improve operational efficiency, appeal to the modern workforce, execute service checklists 3-5% faster and enable greater compliance and quality assurance over completed work instructions, AR Instruct is exactly what you need.
Want to see AR Instruct for yourself? Request a Demo today.
If your organization creates service information, work instructions, installation operator guides, user guides, technical instructions, service manuals, or even service procedure bulletins – it’s time to rethink your process.
Let’s talk about how to make your service information accurate, relevant and accessible.
Defects in products happen, but in the case that a product needs to be taken apart- it’s important to do it the right way. This is especially true with today’s advanced complex products.
This is why organizations often don’t question why they’re managing mountains of paper-based technical publications. But what happens when a service call involves the use of particular tools that aren’t quite outlined in a service procedure manual?
Or when field circumstances turn out to be different than the initial service order and the correct manual may not have made it into a technician’s vehicle?
What happens when technical publications designed to guide service are no longer relevant due to product or tool changes? Despite best efforts – service, installation, and operation problems arise. These problems cause worker confusion, dissatisfied customers, and business risk.
Providing information that no longer applies to specific products forces operators to troubleshoot challenges based on assumptions and experience – or worse – inexperience. Paper-based and locally stored procedures, instructions, and guidelines also have a tendency to make work instructions difficult to find.
If your procedure documentation guidelines are disconnected, they are only hurting you.
The good news is, with the help of simple technology, any organization has an opportunity to rethink their service information. There has never been a better time to make service information accurate, relevant, and easily accessible.
The solution? Interactive digital work instructions.
How to make service information accurate
You might be surprised, but as a matter of fact, the first step towards achieving accurate service information involves using the content (such as Tech Pubs, Arbortext, DITA, XML, Images, etc.) that your organization has already created. Evaluate the current service information processes your organization has in place. For instance, you might currently be using paper documentation.
What’s the problem with paper documentation?
Once your documents are committed to paper alone, you can no longer assure their ongoing accuracy. The underlying information could have changed right after it was printed! Your information should (most definitely) include the latest version of technical publications and content (such as Creo Illustrate, Windchill, Service Information Manager, InDesign, FrameMaker, Oxygen, etc.) that you already have without the need for added latency or work for authoring, styling, and publishing.
When you’re in a digital work instruction environment, that environment is set up to draw from the most accurate up-to-date information available on your system. This is why the best possible way to ensure the accuracy of your service information is to move away from paper workflows and go to digital work instructions – instantaneous access, up-to-date information.
How to make service information relevant
The best way to ensure that your service information is relevant is by connecting your technical publications back to your engineering and manufacturing content creators.
What do we mean by that?
Your work instructions, service manuals, operation guides, and bulletins all come from files you have on hand. So why shouldn’t they directly connect to and show operators and technicians accurate and relevant information about what they do?!
Furthermore, if your current service processes involve the need to find and locate product information before your technicians start the job, you end up losing valuable time.
It’s time to change that.
The way to make your service information more relevant is to have your instructions take your technicians down a specific product path. Using visual work instructions will allow your service teams to get specific information and insights that directly pertain to what they need.
By implementing technology that can cross-reference technical publication content, you can be sure your service information will always be relevant no matter the task.
The technology available today even has features like ‘work process selects’, to route directly to the correct tech pub content. Even better, it also has the ability to navigate to cross-referenced content such as DITA, XML files, images and more!
Simple solutions on the market today can even provide service technicians and operators with the ability to immediately start on a service task. With the help of technology, such as a digital device or a handsfree headset, service technicians can instantly receive relevant work instructions at their fingertips… or eyeballs… by simply scanning a barcode.
Your service information should be accurate and timely, and the best way to make that possible is by directly connecting all the files you currently have! It’s that simple.
How to make service information accessible
Making service information more accessible has everything to do with the use of digital devices such as mobile or wearable devices.
By using mobile or wearable devices, workers have the ability to instantly connect directly to work processes and even existing tech pub source content. Every organization has the ability to make service info easily accessible to the extent that the company wants.
For instance, you can easily make any information accessible and relevant now with a connected Industrial IoT environment. By using Wi-Fi and cellular connections, technicians have the ability to connect online to whatever the most relevant information is.
Your path to better service information
Please contact us to see how Industrial AR can be used to connect and reuse existing technical publications and content. We have the know-how, technology, and team to help you take your digital transformation to the next level, decrease service and manufacturing errors, and improve the way you distribute technical information.
Watch this video to see EAC’s solution for converting work instructions to digital AR experiences with AR Instruct.
The future of digital transformation is happening now, and it is driving the future of all industries. This article highlights just about everything you need to know about the impacts and trends involving digital transformation.
No matter where your company resides on its digital journey – or even if you have yet to start with digital transformation, this article is just for you.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation refers to the concept of applying innovative uses of digital technology to solve traditional business problems.
For example, in a narrower sense digital transformation might refer to a simple concept such as ‘going paperless’. Yet, on a larger scale, it might refer to ‘achieving digital business maturity’.
Digital solutions not only enable organizations to achieve new levels of efficiency through automation, but they also open doors for creativity and innovation (rather than simply enhancing and supporting traditional methods).
Although applying the use of digital technology to solve traditional problems can offer numerous business advantages, many organizations have yet to begin the journey with digital transformation.
Digital Innovation: Where to Start?
With numerous applications, methods, and strategies, it can be difficult to know where to even start with digital transformation!
If this is the case with your organization, – don’t worry, you’re not alone.
According to a research study performed by Accenture and the World Economic Forum, 80% of executives stated they were completely convinced ‘digital’ advancements would fundamentally change and transform their industry within the next 5 years!
That’s right. Eighty percent! … And they’re not wrong at all!
In fact, digital technology has not only already begun to transform industries, but it has also started to transform the way the world experiences products. Despite the ability to recognize the effects that digital processes will bring, only 17% of the studied executives stated they had a strategy in place to address the challenge of digital transformation.
This left a shocking 87% to admit they had no current digital strategy in place whatsoever! This is exactly why, if you have not yet started your digital transformation journey, it’s important to realize A) It’s not too late and B) You are not alone. There is no better time to start than now!
Organizations are realizing the significant impacts that the digital transformation era brings and how it’s going to drastically change just about everything when it comes to the way we do business.
The Impact of Digital Transformation
The process of digital transformation is creating entirely new ways of doing business. It has begun to create new experiences for customers while adding entirely redefined value propositions for mature product segments.
This era of digital transformation has started to impact and define what products are and what they mean to businesses and consumers.
Product perceptions are changing
Digital trends have also started to influence purchase decisions and sales processes. As the digital world has advanced, the average consumer is making purchase decisions with a Product as a Service (PaaS) mindset.
This means the rise of digital transformation has driven consumers to be sold by the outcome of the product – the recurring value. Manufacturers can address this shift in the market demand archetype by embracing three technology categories – Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, and mobile.
The future and advancement of technology is happening now
Established power plays and industry lines are beginning to blur. You cannot wait until some time in the near future to start your digital journey.
If your organization is going to succeed going forward, you won’t want to be left behind in this new industrial revolution, or you will fail.
Whether or not you’ve noticed if your industry has been affected yet, the key message is the effect of these disruptive technologies doesn’t discriminate one sector or industry. Every industry will see a major impact due to these digital technology advancements… And it is happening right now.
‘Business as usual’ is no longer an option. Organizations must adapt in order to survive.
The future of Digital Transformation: Smart, Connected Products
Digital transformation is reinventing products. Products from cars, to jet engines, to pumps, to heavy equipment, to medication, and more!
Machines, assets, and devices are starting to communicate, learn, and react to newly accessible context as they exchange and leverage data from sensors.
We are talking about the area of ‘living products’ – meaning transformative products that are responsive, collaborative, reactive, and responsible. Whether products are B2B or B2C, there will be a totally different process in the way we think about how our customers are using our products in the near future.
The future is now. Don’t let the opportunity slip away.
The first step in your digital transformation journey should be a strategic one. Understand where you are, where you want to be according to your current framework or understanding, and where you’d like to be as you embrace future technology and evolve with changing markets and new opportunities.
EAC Product Development Solutions would like to help you begin your transformation. We provide the people, technology, and services to make any transformation successful. The first step should be a Product Development System Assessment (PDSA). This will help you understand the opportunity that lies in front of you. Request more information on the PDSA today and start taking your digital transformation seriously.
Our Product Development System Assessment will help you start your digital transformation journey
PTC is expanding its Augmented Reality (AR) solutions with another powerful Vuforia product – Vuforia Expert Capture. The technology allows an expert or skilled worker to ‘capture’, or record, their manual procedures on the manufacturing floor to then deliver the recorded step-by-step instructions to new hires or other employees to perform that same procedure.
Vuforia Expert Capture empowers front-line workers with the confidence to do their jobs with increased productivity and improved efficiency with easily viewable procedures by using a hands-free, AR-enabled, wearable headset, such as the Microsoft Hololens or RealWear HMT-1.
How does Vuforia Expert Capture work?
Vuforia Expert Capture uses three different AR-enabled technologies to create location-specific AR guidance including Vuforia Capture, Vuforia Editor, and Vuforia View.
Vuforia Capture: An expert uses the Hololens or RealWear to record the procedure with the Vuforia Capture software downloaded into the wearable device.
Vuforia Editor: A content creator uses Vuforia Editor, an editing software, to edit, modify, or add to the captured procedure and then publishes it.
Vuforia View: A new hire or other employee uses a Hololens, RealWear, mobile phone, or tablet device with the downloaded Vuforia View software to then perform the captured procedure.
The skilled worker, or subject-matter-expert (SME), can use voice or gesture-controlled commands to take photos or add bookmarks during the recorded procedure. The bookmarks would then allow the editor to focus in on highlighted parts of the procedure and add additional content such as a still image, a 3D CAD file, or links to other resources available through the organization’s existing content.
Who benefits from using captured AR experiences?
Your organization can benefit the most in manufacturing, service, and training uses cases where:
The knowledge from SMEs can be captured instantly without causing too much disruption from daily work activities while reducing the need for rigorous training for other workers.
PTC’s customer, Global Foundries, a global full-service semiconductor manufacturing company, has found success with the implementation of using Vuforia Expert Capture:
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Michael Campbell, EVP of AR products at PTC, says in a press release, “We are excited to offer industrial enterprises a new way to use AR to leverage the tribal knowledge of SMEs and help alleviate the skills gap crisis threatening today’s industrial enterprise. Vuforia Expert Capture is a high-value, out-of-the-box solution that accelerates AR content creation that enables manufacturers to not only improve the accuracy and speed at which workers successfully complete new or unfamiliar tasks, but also to reduce training costs and time to productivity.”
Campbell, in a recent webcast that introduced the new product release, says that PTC is working on allowing users to use Vuforia Chalk, Vuforia Studio, and Vuforia Expert Capture in sync with one another. This would allow content creators to embed 3D CAD files into the procedures while editing captured processes in Vuforia Editor or it would allow employees new to procedures to essentially ‘dial-in’ to a remote expert with Vuforia Chalk to then ‘talk’ him through the procedure while seeing assisted chalk overlays onto real-world equipment.
You can start implementing AR in your organization with Vuforia Expert Capture to rapidly capture high-value procedures from the expert’s point-of-view. Contact us to talk to an AR expert: you can request more information or ask for a live demo with your team on-site.
Check out our Augmented Reality Gallery for more real-world use cases for Industrial AR.
Download our product brief on Vuforia Expert Capture to learn more about PTC’s AR product.
Data Visualization and system integration tools are shaping the future of business and I am going to explain exactly why.
First, it is essential that you understand the impacts of technology and data today.
The impacts of big data
Humans collectively produce approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day and this number is only increasing with the acceleration of the Internet of Things (IoT). These already astonishing statistics are growing at an ever-increasing rate as our world becomes even more digitized and data-centric.
Due to this overwhelming growth, businesses have begun facing challenges with data capture, analysis, distribution, storage, and visualization. In fact, big data has started to become so large and so complex that businesses are even finding traditional data processing techniques to be inadequate. This is exactly why system integration and business intelligence software have become essential components for successful business data management strategies.
System integration and system integration tools
Enterprise application integration software combine components of sub-systems together into one centralized system. Essentially, system integration applications ensure all business systems function together as one.
For instance, integration applications (such as EAC Productivity Apps) connect existing systems and enable seamless data to flow from various systems into role-based dashboards or “mashups.”
By using applications that integrate all of your business systems, your organization opens up a clear, efficient path, for information to travel from one application or system to another. The process of linking together different computing systems and software applications opens up an organization’s ability to easily collect, aggregate, and share data.
Business intelligence
The trend towards business intelligence (BI) has driven many companies to evaluate technology-driven processes for analyzing data and presenting actionable information.
Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, analytics, data mining, process mining, business performance management, benchmarking, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.
BI technologies can handle large amounts of structured and sometimes unstructured data to help
System integration, Bi, and data visualization
Tools and applications that integrate business systems incorporate oftentimes incorporate data visualizations, also known as data dashboards.
Data visualizations deliver graphical representations of data or information, often in the form of a chart, diagram, picture, or any other visual illustration. Visual representations of data and information help humans understand the significance of data by transforming it into information placing it in a visual context.
Human visual processing is efficient in detecting changes and making comparisons between quantities, sizes, shapes, and variations in lightness. When properties of symbolic data are mapped to visual properties, humans can browse through large amounts of data efficiently.
If considering the way the human brain processes information, using charts or graphs to visualize large amounts of complex data is much easier than attempting to analyze multiple different spreadsheets or reports. By using visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data.
The impacts of data visualization
Data visualization enables executives, managers, and other corporate end users, to easily digest huge amounts of data by displaying visuals.
These data visuals encourage decision makers to compare sizeable amounts of information while data is being revealed beneath several levels of detail. This encourages the natural eye to compare and contrast different pieces of data, that may have otherwise been lost within reports.
System integration tools that collect data from internal and external systems and aggregate it into data dashboards, enable organizations to reason quantitative information. This helps executives, managers, and other corporate end users to better understand trends, patterns, and possible correlations. Data visualizations can also allow decision makers to make better business decisions.
Visual data representations of information assist decision makers in the absorption of information in new and more constructive ways. They encourage a user to think about the substance of the data rather than the methodology.
With the ability to manipulate and interact directly with data, organizations visualize relationships and pattern between operational and business activities. This allows them to identify and act on emerging trends faster, as well as, identify areas that need attention or improvement.
By using system integration business intelligence tools and applications, organizations can collect data from internal and external systems, prepare it for analysis, develop and run queries against that data, and create reports, dashboards and data visualizations to make the analytical results available to corporate decision-makers, as well as operational workers.
Think data visualization and system integration could be what your organization needs?
We offer EAC Productivity Apps as
