AWE 2019 Atheer and AREA panel

AWE started early on May 29th – with a breakfast and panel of experts exploring how Augmented Reality is changing the way companies in the automotive and manufacturing worlds tackle the challenges of skills shortages, competitive pressures and a desire to reduce resolution times and better meet customer needs.

The panel was moderated by Mark Sage, the executive director of the Augmented Reality Enterprise Alliance (AREA), who kicked the discussion off by asking the panelists how they are seeing AR being used in their different industries.

Automotive industry veteran (and new Atheer advisor) Salim Murr offered his perspective on how he sees the AR use case for automotive dealers. He said while many industries are facing shortages of experienced, skilled technicians, that shortage is particularly acute in the automotive industry.

He said the shortage is compounded by the massive sea change facing the sector as it moves to meet the growing demand for electric and hybrid vehicles, which require not only retraining existing staff (and providing them with fast, efficient and accurate, on-the-ground support), but also ensuring that they are deeply familiar with the safety issues that come with working on high voltage electric vehicles. “You do not want touch 400 volts!,” he warned.

Meanwhile, Dirk Frese, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at JULABO USA, pointed out for companies like Julabo (which produces highly dynamic and precise temperature control solutions), the focus is on using augmented reality to help diagnose, repair and review products to ensure they are optimized for both customers and their applications.

Moderator Mark Sage also suggested that AR is an interesting technology in that its enterprise customers almost segment themselves more by their use cases (such as field service, training or warehouse management) than they do by industry. And he pointed out that for any enterprise wanting to adopt AR, they really need to have strong baseline data to capture their existing costs and processes and then be crystal clear about the problems they are trying to solve.

Atheer CEO Amar Dhaliwal, who was both a member of the panel and also the host for the event (held at Atheer’s Santa Clara offices less than 2 miles from AWE) reported that several strong use cases are emerging for enterprise AR – including field service, dealer service, on-the-job training, maintenance, repair and overhaul, inspection and surveying (notably for insurance companies) as well as cargo handling and warehouse operations (such as the work Atheer is doing with the International Air Transport Association).