Evaluating potential Augmented Reality (AR) solutions for manufacturing can quickly become overwhelming when you consider testing out product trials and going over pricing details.

A new IDC Report, How AR Drives Real-World Gains in Service, Training, Sales & Marketing, and Manufacturing, states, “AR technology is here and now, and companies of all shapes and sizes are utilizing it to change the way work gets done and to drive better outcomes.”

This article talks about the top proven industrial Augmented Reality Solutions and exactly what they can do for your industry.

The most widely used platform for AR development: Vuforia Engine

Today, over half a million developers have chosen the advanced performance and cross-platform reach of Vuforia Engine, making it the most widely used platform for AR development on the planet.

Why is this considered to be the most flexible tool for AR development? Because it delivers robust and precise AR experiences in a variety of environments. This AR Engine is a powerful cross-platform software enabling branded AR experiences for both new and existing applications to be deployed in leading app stores.

It lets developers freely build branded AR experiences for new or existing applications and supports AR devices such as phones, tablets, headsets, and smart glasses across leading platforms to reach the largest audience.

By using Vuforia Engine, developers can easily add advanced computer vision functionality to Android, iOS, and UWP apps, to create AR experiences that realistically interact with objects and the environment.

The Vuforia Engine Library also contains technical documentation to help developers be successful as they create AR applications.

With Vuforia Engine, AR developers can harness best-in-class computer vision capabilities, to detect and launch a variety of target types. This AR engine also is equipped with broad support for leading modeling platforms and user applications.

Features and capabilities of Vuforia Engine

Vuforia Engine comes with many distinguishing features and capabilities. These include:

 Discover all of the unique features of Vuforia Engine here.

What are Vuforia Engine applications used for?

Vuforia Engine AR applications are best used for:

The best AR Authoring Solution: Vuforia Studio

Vuforia Studio is an Augmented reality authoring solution that lets you quickly build scalable AR experiences. Vuforia Studio is an augmented reality authoring solution that helps you rapidly build AR experiences.

Vuforia Studio enables efficient, cost-effective authoring of industrial AR without the need for in-depth programming or skilled programmers.

This AR solution helps designers, engineers, and technical publication end users author and publish scalable AR experiences that transform manufacturing, service, and training processes.

You can now experience features from the tool that have a robust and visual interface – easy for design file importing and ubiquitous viewer support.

How does Vuforia Studio work?

Vuforia Studio is a drag-and-drop authoring environment that enables industrial content creators to use existing 3D CAD and animated sequences.

This AR authoring tool leverages real-time IoT and business systems data and allows users to access and view experiences from a single app.

Its simple, easy-to-use drag and drop interface allows content creators with no prior coding knowledge to get up and running quickly.

Vuforia Studio features and capabilities

Distinguishing AR features and capabilities that come with Vuforia Studio include:

What are Vuforia Studio applications used for?

Vuforia Studio is best used for:

The Best AR Remote Assistance Software: Vuforia Chalk

Vuforia Chalk is a powerful AR remote assistance and guidance application that helps experts and technicians solve problems more effectively.

You can think of it as an easy to deploy, mobile-based guidance and collaboration AR tool.

Vuforia Chalk enables pairs of mobile device users to collaborate around a shared view of objects and environments, with smart 3D annotation capabilities.

This allows senior experts to virtually share knowledge with junior colleagues and removes geographical barriers to collaboration. Picture this – if you’re a service technician in Nebraska, you can be helping someone located in Oklahoma just with the power of your fingers on your mobile device using the Vuforia Chalk app.

Vuforia Chalk combines advanced augmented reality with real-time communications to connect a field technician with an expert so that the expert can see and discuss the situation in the field.

With this powerful AR remote assistance application, a technician or an expert can draw digital annotations (using one’s finger on the screen) that accurately anchor to physical objects, allowing the expert to guide the technician through the process, step-by-step.

It allows experts and technicians to accurately markup live views, highlight details, and guide multi-step solutions.

Essentially, this AR tool empowers field technicians with instant “over the shoulder” field support to finish every jobs and tasks without delay.

The software helps organizations increase service quality while reducing repeat maintenance or repair visits – providing frontline workers with access to service information in a completely modern way.

Vuforia Chalk makes it easy to guide service and troubleshoot situations that may not be covered in training or service manuals.

Vuforia Chalk features and capabilities

Vuforia Chalk is paired with many distinguishing features and capacities that include:

What are Vuforia Chalk applications used for?

Vuforia Chalk makes it easy for remote experts to provide remote over-the-sholder guidance to speed troubleshooting. Using either a mobile device or tablet, remote experts can connect to technicians and annotate on their shared view.

Vuforia Chalk is best used for:

Transform work instructions with Vuforia Expert Capture

Vuforia Expert Capture is the fastest and easiest way to create step-by-step instructions that help frontline workers get their job done accurately and efficiently.

Vuforia Expert Capture gives content creators and subject matter experts step-by-step instructions with rich media content, text, and audio to improve workforce productivity, quality, safety, and compliance.

It is an out-of-the-box AR solution that features drag and drop AR content creation for industrial enterprises looking to rapidly document expert knowledge and then easily scale that knowledge to new or redeployed workers as hands-on training or task guidance.

This tool provides an easy way for experts in your organization to record video procedures and instructions to others using augmented and assisted reality.

Features of Vuforia Expert Capture

There are many distinguishing features and capabilities of Vuforia Expert Capture some of which include:

What are Vuforia Expert Capture applications used for?

Vuforia Expert Capture is best used for:

Why use Vuforia products?

Vuforia makes AR content easy to create and deliver widely to the enterprise to help improve efficiencies, reduce downtime, and enable safer and more productive workers.

With the industrial Vuforia AR platform, organizations can build custom experiences from the ground up, or rapidly create and scale enterprise-ready industrial AR experiences without writing any code using Vuforia Studio.

Whether the requirement is a custom solution or the ability to deliver rapidly, Vuforia delivers powerful, game changing industrial AR technology.

Looking to to get started with AR? Contact us.

If you…

… then get in touch with a Vuforia AR Specialist to answer questions and schedule your demonstration. Our AR experts can help you take the next step in your journey.

There are many benefits of AR (Augmented Reality or Assisted Reality) and digital work instructions, but the idea of digital transformation can seem overwhelming. This article talks about why many organizations are starting to consider digital work instructions, and the benefits augmented reality (AR) can bring.

As organizations begin to deploy applications at scale, they often realize that AR presents both opportunities and challenges. Creating compelling AR experiences for an enterprise has historically been difficult, limiting the reach of how much and what can be deployed.

Despite the occasional challenges, organizations continue to explore the new possibilities and value AR can bring to service, operations, engineering, and manufacturing.

For starters, if you’ve made a heavy investment in technical publications or technical documentation, odds are you have a lot of content in a multitude of systems and formats such as Arbortext, DITA, or even S1000D. This has most likely occurred over a long period of time and leveraged a lot of resources.

With all the resources, time, and energy put into your technical publications the idea of ‘going digital’ or moving towards ‘digital work instructions’ can be daunting.

So why is there currently so much ‘hype’ about pairing Augmented Reality with service or manufacturing, and what benefits can it bring to your organization?

Well… there are a lot of reasons for taking on digital work instructions, or even hands-free work instructions, that can be projected by a head-mounted tablet, a headset, or even an iPad or cellular device. And quite frankly, there are a lot of practical applications throughout an enterprise that can benefit from up to date content delivery and process/quality control.

Augmented Reality relates to the new workforce

If you look at manufacturing plants, assembly facilities, and at the service world as a whole – these groups of people are aging. This means that the manufacturing skills gap is widening.

In fact, there’s quite a bit of turnover happening which is starting to make it difficult for organizations to find competent, qualified replacements.

Studies show that over the next decade, due to economic expansion and the surge in baby boomer retirement, nearly 3.5 million industrial jobs will be needed, and 2 million are expected to go unfilled.

For instance, if you look at an aircraft assembly worker today, most are going to be older guys and gals. They’re used to doing things with physical resources (such as paper for example).

But if you’re looking to replace one of these retiring workers, your replacement is most likely going to be someone used to consuming his or her information through technology devices like iPads or mobile phones. A bonus, however, is that these individuals are more likely to be very open to new technology such as a head-mounted tablet.

The fact is, in most cases, we are talking about entirely different generations of our workforce. The way they consume, process, and work with new information will be entirely different than veteran-ed workers.

It is in your best interest to get these new-aged workers up to speed as quickly as possible. An excellent way to do that is to use delivery methods familiar to younger generations.

This is one of the many reasons companies have begun to explore augmented reality (AR).

Best-in-class organizations realize the benefit of investing in ways to get new workers up to speed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

AR for field service

Many organizations see “field service” as an excellent starting point to implement AR. There are a lot of time savings for service personnel when you go from paper to digital. This is why companies across the board have made the decision to go into a paperless environment.

The upside of AR is readily apparent when inspecting how someone attempts to execute specific detailed tasks on a shop floor. This almost always involves going back to paper instructions which in turn, takes time and wastes a whole lot of resources; hunting for documentation, going to-and-from workstations to document cabinets, etc. This compounds as workers switch tasks.

Augmented Reality provides cross reference materials

By simply enabling a workforce to digitally access resources, an organization can save time, proactively improve processes, and more effectively manage quality.

Augmented Reality allows workers to very quickly and efficiently cross-reference material and pull up related images, user guides, bulletins, and other content. All without leaving a workstation or job site.

For example, if a service technician was to get lost while using a paper instruction manual and he or she didn’t know the next step, AR provides a solution.

With an augmented experience the service technician can link directly back to technical information to read further into a problem that perhaps wasn’t included on the paper instruction manual or was somewhere else.

AR helps track detailed project status

Because AR is simply a delivery mechanism, it can be configured to interact with multiple databases and content sources. Project and task authentication and sign-off requirements can be delivered to workers through their devices but managed digitally at the edge or within discrete systems.

This means there’s a detailed digital trail of the work that’s been done and being done by each individual service technician.

Therefore, if a service task were to get interrupted, someone else on the team could pick up where the previous technician left off – knowing that the all the steps in the work instructions have been completed and signed off by the last worker.

Process and quality control benefits of AR

Some AR solutions even provide the added benefit of recording the time taken to complete a specific step or entire task. It provides insight into possible areas for training or process optimization.

In other words, it can help an organization notice discrepancies between expectations and execution – ‘as written’ and ‘as executed.’

You open the door to many closed-loop quality control improvements when you have insight into, and a digital signature on every completed task.

Hands-free work environment

Both head-mounted tablets and phones can be operated in a hands-free environment.

Handheld devices scan activated QR codes to read instructions. This allows operators to maneuver hands-free while the instructions are being read to them.

By using a head-mounted template environment, you can verbally communicate with the instructions on the head-mounted tablet without ever having to look away from work, or wake up a tablet or phone.

The return on investment for AR

The upfront costs are often the most expensive part of this piece of this digital transformation journey. Whether implementing a full-scale enterprise deployment or a proof-of-concept, you’ll often need to lay the same foundation of supporting technology. But it is worth it.

Talk with us if you’d like help figuring out a ballpark investment to get AR going at your company.

The ROI is tangible and real. For instance, AR solutions can easily save a $60,000 fully loaded resource 8 to 12 minutes a day by replacing paper and disjointed processes. That turns into four hours a month, forty-eight hours a year. That’s more than $1,300 per year in savings for every worker. The ROI quickly goes up proportional to the number of users added to the system.

Conclusion

I’ve made my case. But it doesn’t change the challenge I brought up at the beginning of this article. Moving, converting, and re-authoring legacy technical documentation is daunting…

Or is it?

We have a solution. It’s called AR Instruct™. Watch the video below to get an idea of what it is and how it could help you.

AR Instruct™ is an application that takes an existing product, assembly, service, and other technical information (in formats like DITA, XML, Arbortext, S100D, etc.) and dynamically transitions it to be displayed in a digital work environment. We aren’t talking about publishing a PDF on an iPad either.

AR Instruct™ publishes fully interactive experiences complete with voice commands, step management, graphic viewers and all.

You should do two things after reading this article – 1) Request a demonstration and 2) Forward this on to the people in your organization responsible for publishing and managing work and service instructions.

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.