What does it solve, and how does it help?
Until 2016, Augmented Reality was anything but a pipedream in the hastened hype of Industry 4.0. Augmented Reality’s collaborative and immersive nature has revolutionized factory production lines, shopfloor inspection, and quick service resolution.
The global Augmented Reality market value is believed to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.8% from 2021 to 2028. The adoption rate of AR in manufacturing depicts its disruptive power capable of delivering massive industrial transformation.
All thanks to the rapid evolution of digital technologies in heavy industrial businesses and manufacturing domains. As manufacturers are under tremendous pressure to produce products to meet customers’ rising expectations and quality parameters, Augmented Reality wearable technology enables organizations to achieve greater flexibility in their operations.
Two challenges necessitated the adoption of Augmented Reality in Manufacturing
- Safety & Efficiency
Time and proficiency matter a lot for a manufacturer. Given the complex nature of products and tough competition in the manufacturing domain, efficiency becomes a major concern for manufacturers. The role of new or inexperienced workers often slows down the work and presents flaws that lead to unforeseen safety concerns and escalating costs.
- Limited Technical Knowledge
Industrial enterprises expect to operate at optimum speeds while their customers demand quick service resolutions. When your technical workforce lacks the subject knowledge or possesses limited expertise, it leads to a longer resolution time. Hence, manufacturers tend to lose valuable customers to the competition.
How does an Augmented Reality device help assist manufacturing personnel?
When your frontline workers and service technicians face resource-intensive and difficult jobs, all they have to do is ‘ASK’.
That’s how easy it gets to use an AR-enabled device and application when your team assembles complex parts of the product or attends to on-site painstaking maintenance work.
What is an Augmented Reality device?
An AR-enabled device acts just like a feature-rich smartphone or tablet that a technician can wear on his head. The voice-activated Augmented Reality glass helps provide situational awareness in hazardous environments. Whether your technicians are on oil rigs or at dizzying heights of wind turbines, an AR-powered device keeps your service engineers hands-free and helps them use apps via voice commands without compromising on safety. AR-powered devices help benefit domains such as Insurance, Pharmaceutical Labs, Compliance, and Manufacturing.
It all sounds real. And something more!
Here is a step-by-step journey of a technician and his AR-assisted collaboration.
From fixing a circuit board to repairing a pipeline in deep seas, services engineers encounter several challenges. As the technology evolved, field-operations functions have taken a quantum leap of precision. Intelligent Augmented Reality technology changes how technicians operate to achieve better efficiency and productivity. A three-step process shows how a service engineer finds real-time support from an AR-guided process harnessed by smart technology features.
Voice-assisted team collaboration: When your frontline worker is on complex field operations duty, he can use voice-controlled AR glasses to call the subject matter expert for accurate problem identification.
Instant guidance through video navigation: Attending a field operation often leads to casualties and unfortunate situations. The probability of risk is higher in critical work areas. With an adjustable HD-video support feature, the technician can instantly share the point of view with a back-end expert. Its live streaming support helps the technician and the support staff pinpoint the accurate area on a piece of heavy equipment where the repair is needed. In short, it eliminates errors that could lead to irreparable damages.
Rectify in real-time: The field technician and the back-end expert can collaborate in real-time by exchanging instantly captured equipment images and flow of actions. The AR’s capability of object visualization further helps the technician precisely run a diagnosis and resolve technical glitches that equipment and machinery have encountered.
The remarkable assistive and hands-free Augmented Reality tool has become a game-changer for remote collaboration. Manufacturers are in a better position to overcome the challenges of manually maintained inspection log files. Furthermore, organizations have the advantage of eliminating service delays, escalating costs due to an incompetent workforce on the field.
Visual assistance for real-world scenarios
AR-powered glasses will enable frontline workers to solve complex machinery challenges in hard-to-reach places and risk-prone areas. The smart glasses come with high-definition cameras and voice controls to provide incredible remote assistance.
Documentation made easy
Challenge: Carrying bulky cameras puts service engineers at risk. As they get occupied in handling the cameras, they will not have the flexibility to respond to changes in a challenging work environment.
Solution: Smart AR Glasses allow them to capture images or record videos of procedures in just a few voice commands at any given situation.
Accuracy in inspection
Challenge: Service engineers often lack the support of readily available images, as they have to depend only on a few notes jotted done by fellow engineers.
Solution: Engineers are better equipped with AR glasses to capture images or record job inspection videos accurately.
Hassle-free Training
Challenge: Given a complex on-field situation, engineers or technicians may require additional help to detect the problem. Due to the lack of a synchronization process with the central team, service resolutions cause unexplained delays that often lead to downtimes.
Solution: As an AR device helps share images and videos in real-time, the on-field technicians get the support needed from their back-end teams for quick interpretation. It keeps the time-consuming trial and error methods aside and brings hands-free visual assistance when needed most.
Takeaway
The evolution of ‘Smart Factories’ as promised by Industry 4.0 is now an absolute reality in action. When a simple AR application can do wonders for your organization, why keep waiting?
Evoke Technologies can become your technology partner if you are looking to embrace AR and Mobile solutions for your business. Evoke has the expertise in developing highly capable industrial AR applications that can supercharge your efforts to achieve greater productivity, utmost safety, and efficiency. Evoke has helped leading global manufacturers to adopt the transformative Augmented Reality for their factories and field services.
Want to learn how we create AR-powered solutions? Schedule a quick demo with our experts.
