The comprehensive research study and corresponding report identifies significant financial improvements realized by industrial companies embracing augmented reality (AR), and provides best practices for unlocking the potential of the technology across various environments.

In addition to the report published, PTC announced exclusive data from Aberdeen that shows that organizations using AR have experienced significant year-over-year business growth and have improved their bottom lines dramatically.

“The rapid pace of the global market, digital transformation, and increasing shortage of highly skilled workers have produced a disruptive threat for businesses,” said Tom Paquin, research analyst, Aberdeen Group. “However, as evidenced by our latest report with PTC, companies that invest in AR, particularly manufacturing and service organizations, have the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.”

For enterprises, AR can empower workers to understand and interact with the physical and digital worlds, build new skills with reduced training time and cost, and make informed decisions faster. As a result, businesses can unlock increased productivity and improve the effectiveness of training, manufacturing, and service.

“AR is one of the fastest growing segments in the technology market and has been shown to create significant business value for organizations adopting it. Industrial enterprises are keen to improve customer experiences, open up new revenue streams, and disrupt competition by leveraging the new AR capabilities for product and service differentiation,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “Use cases being developed for end customers have a strong focus on service or maintenance instructions, enabling them to reduce machine downtime and maximize product value.”

Also in the press release are details from AWE Europe 2018

PTC and the topic of enterprise AR took center stage today (Oct 18 2018) at AWE Europe 2018, the world’s leading AR and VR conference and expo, held October 18-19 in Munich, Germany.

This morning, Mike Campbell, EVP, Augmented Reality Products, PTC, led a keynote session titled, “PTC Vision for Augmented Reality in the Enterprise,” in which he spoke about the state of AR in the industrial enterprise, reviewed customer use cases, and illustrated the power of AR to fundamentally change the way people work and to allow organizations to re-imagine how to manufacture, sell, operate, and service industrial products.

“Augmented reality can deliver a significant advantage for industrial organizations as part of their overall digital transformation,” said Mr. Campbell. “PTC customers are better leveraging existing investments in CAD, IoT, and digitalization of content through AR experiences, enabling people to visualize and interact with the digital world in the real-time context of their daily work.”

As a Titanium Sponsor of and exhibitor at the event, PTC is showcasing its latest AR solutions – Vuforia Studio, Vuforia Engine, and Vuforia Chalk – as well as distributing copies of the Aberdeen research report at booth 118. PTC is also participating in The International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), which runs in conjunction with AWE Europe, in booth 405.

The whitepaper addresses whether AR is mature enough for widespread use and mass adoption.

This white paper was drafted by the b<>com Hypermedia team, specifically by Jérôme Royan, Hypermedia Principal Architect, Muriel Deschanel, Hypermedia Business Development Director and Nicole Le Minous, Project Manager. The three of them are experts in augmented reality technologies.

This contribution is based on skills developed at b<>com, focusing on natural interaction in immersive environments. In order to develop technologies that enhance human performance, b<>com experts study collaboration between heterogeneous immersive systems, ranging from augmented reality glasses to advanced gesture-based interfaces to industrial virtual reality equipment. The user is central to the way b<>com thinks and works, from defining usage cases to prototyping.

The whitepaper can be downloaded by visiting their website.

82% of companies currently implementing augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) say the benefits are either meeting or exceeding their expectations.

However, a shortage of in-house expertise and insufficient backend infrastructures are significant barriers to growth.

Drawing on responses from more than 700 executives in the automotive, manufacturing and utilities sectors found that 50% of enterprises currently not implementing AR and VR will start exploring immersive technologies for their business operations within the next three years.

These include using AR to remotely access real-time help from experts on a wearable or handheld device, and VR to train employees. Some 46% of companies believe the technology will become mainstream in their organisations within the next three years, while a further 38% think it will in the next three to five years.

The report found that companies in the US and China are currently leading the implementation race, with more than 50% of companies surveyed already implementing immersive technology for business operations.

Conversely, over 50% of companies in the UK, France, Germany, and the Nordics are still only experimenting with AR/VR initiatives.

As well as a number of short infograhpics, the articlecontains information about:

• The benefits of immersive technologies
• Most common use cases

The report identified a group of “early achievers” who are driving the most benefits from their immersive technology initiatives.

Image source: The Manufacturer, Smart Factory Expo

The article concludes with an invitation to Europe’s largest digital manufacturing event – Smart Factory Expo to be held on 14 – 15 November at the Exhibition Centre Liverpool, UK

The article then runs through the process a business would need to take in making decisions about where to start with the technology and how to progress through the journey.

To start with, it’s all about defining the most appropriate use cases around your existing business processes- and not trying to create problems to solve. It’s also about not fully buying in to the media hype that surrounds the technology, you need to make sure that your use cases are appropriate for today’s technologies. This will help align your business with the correct device and the correct ‘reality’.

Even if a suitable use case has been identified, you still need to get support from across your organisation. People need to be open to trying and using the different devices and types of reality, and thinking about how they could be used within various departments. It’s essential to get people on board in terms of buy-in. In engineering and manufacturing, many existing processes are so well established that even the slightest change to the status quo could cause resistance.

In the early stages it is best to be open minded and realistic as to what you want to achieve, and from a technology standpoint, be device agnostic. Today, nobody really knows which devices are best, or which will win out over time. New devices are appearing all the time and in 12 months’ time the next generation of devices will have hit the market.

So ultimately, the things you need to think about are:

• Don’t fully buy in to the media hype
• Be realistic as to what’s possible today-it will be different in 12 months’ time
• Define your use cases
• Don’t create problems to solve
• Get internal support
• Make sure you have infrastructure to support the devices
• Experiment with all devices – see which would suit your needs best. The type of device you choose will dictate the type of ‘reality’.
• Think short-term ROI as this market is new and evolving rapidly.

Although investing in new technologies like this can seem like a risk to begin with-especially if you’re not sure how they will fit in to your workplace-using AR, MR and VR in engineering and manufacturing workflows is gradually becoming more mainstream, and is changing the way people are working for the future- will you get left behind?

There are some clear areas where AR would be beneficial to the industry. For example, with some processes involving hundreds of components being constructed into a precise and often constrained sequence, AR provides the opportunity for assembly instructions to be superimposed onto the worker’s field of vision for immediate access. This also means that workers wouldn’t need to rely on potentially out-of-date instructions as documents can be automatically updated when new versions become available.

Maintenance Matters

In addition to its use on the assembly line, one of AR’s biggest potential areas is its integration within maintenance programmes.

From very early on, AR can be used to train maintenance engineers on the environments that they will encounter. This is of particular benefit for projects in hazardous environments such as food and beverage manufacturing, pharmaceuticals or even remote environments such as oil rigs.

Where AR holds its maximum potential is through real-time data and information access. By using AR, maintenance teams can have direct access to equipment data or system errors through their digital view in order to repair and maximise efficiencies on any equipment they are working on. Being able to access and see a machine’s real-time status and data could unlock a wealth of valuable information, allowing for a truly predictive maintenance plan to be implemented.

Off-site Access

AR also opens up the potential for off-site staff to access the same view as the maintenance team on site. This has the potential to support multi-location, or global teams that have equipment or service experts that may not be easily accessible to help support maintenance processes, particularly in emergency or unplanned circumstances.

By enabling a ‘see-what-I-see’ view through the AR technology, engineers can look through the same view as the on-site technician who is performing the maintenance tasks. Linking up workers through voice calls would further ease this process, as the experts can communicate the required actions and be able to see and guide the on-site worker complete them in real-time view.

This has considerable cost saving implications as not all technicians would need to be trained in every piece of equipment or process before they can begin work. It opens the opportunity of true on-the-job learning as well as increasing the opportunity of skills and knowledge sharing across multiple sites, or even nations.

So, while AR and other mixed reality concepts are only just beginning to see their value in industrial and manufacturing sectors, the possibilities of what can be achieved by integrating them into everyday practice is about to make exciting leaps forward.

Interview between John Hitch, for Industry Week and Don Busiek, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy at PTC, on why they helped put together the comic.

JH: Who is this AR experience for?

DB: The next generation of manufacturers, the students and local community around manufacturing centers in the U.S. This AR experience will inspire young people by demonstrating that manufacturing in a smart connected world is filled with technology, advanced skills, and creativity, which all add up to great opportunity. AR will not only help improve manufacturing productivity, but it will also help drive an increased level of excitement about the manufacturing profession in general.

JH: What do you hope this AR experience does?

DB: Our hope is that the comic book provides an easily accessible path for students to better understand how these emerging technologies in AR, IIoT, and additive manufacturing, etc. are employed in modern manufacturing, as well as highlight different possible career paths that are available.

JH: How did you decide what message to drive home this year?

DB: According to a recent report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, 80% of manufacturers currently indicate a moderate or serious shortage of qualified applicants. Specifically, they found that over the next decade 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled and the skills gap is expected to result in 2 million of those jobs being unfilled. Knowledgeable workers are retiring and we simply do not have the next generation of manufacturing leaders in position to fill their place.

Our message this year is that augmented reality gives you super human powers in manufacturing. We really wanted to demonstrate that manufacturing in a smart connected world is filled with technology, advanced skills, and creativity.

JH: Why is Manufacturing Day so critical for manufacturers?

DB: Manufacturing Day serves as a means of inspiring the next generation to consider careers in manufacturing at a time when it is undergoing a digital transformation. The world of manufacturing is transforming, and technology is driving that process. Many modern manufacturing companies are at the cutting edge of new technologies like the Industrial Internet of Things, additive manufacturing/3D printing, artificial intelligence and analytics, and augmented reality. Manufacturing Day created an opportunity to expose many common misperceptions about manufacturing jobs and hopefully shrink that jobs gap.

JH: It combines so many emerging technologies, many that will be ubiquitous when the tweens who read this join the workforce. How do you think the factory of 2030 will look and what is the risk if we don’t cultivate the talent to operate it?

DB: The factory of 2030 will be dramatically more productive than the factories of today. With AR, IIoT, additive manufacturing, and digital technology platforms, both machines and human labor will be significantly more productive, and innovation will accelerate exponentially at 1/10th of the cost.

For example, unplanned downtime will be at record lows due to IoT enabled predictive maintenance. Factories will be paperless and workers will use AR to increase human productivity. The products produced will be directly aligned with consumers preferences due to IoT enabled integrations with consumer sources such as social media. Supply chains will be lean due to additive manufacturing. Engineers will collaborate on a smaller number of parts that will be printed rather than assembled.

Without the right talent, manufacturers will have difficulty keeping pace with competitors and risk becoming obsolete.

DB: In a world that is increasingly becoming virtual, we communicate via email or text, we play video games instead of sports, there is really something so gratifying about knowing what you work on helps create the physical products we use in our everyday life. I feel immensely proud when I tell my family that food they are eating, or the car we drive was produced using the industrial technology I work on. Manufacturing is where it is at.

For years now, technology has been improving the education industry and thus developing entire human race. Technology has made our classrooms digital with screens, projectors, etc. There are advanced labs set up for computer programming, Bloomberg terminals for finance and equity learning, etc. This  technology was very much the need of the hour since students learn much more by doing (experiential learning) than by listening or seeing. Educational institutions are charging technology fees or infrastructure fees which is required to build such high-class infrastructure for better learning.

The access to the internet and online resources enables researchers to share their ideas and knowledge on specific topics which can be accessed by anybody around the world. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have opened a new world of knowledge. Top Universities and Professors around the world are launching their courses via MOOC which can be accessed easily. This as an example of democratizing education which is good for humanity as a whole. There are many startups in EduTech space which are also working towards same.

All of this creates a huge amount of data regarding lectures, content, videos, etc. Students sometimes get lost in the sea of information, and need help in analyzing and evaluating the information and also determining the authenticity and validity of the content. The main challenge is the adoption of technology and the up-skilling of teaching staff. They need to learn new technical skills to be relevant.

Whatever we have discussed till now have already been implemented in most of the developed countries, but the developing nations are still very far behind.

The fourth industrial revolution has brought new technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things (IoT), Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, etc. Their technologies are going to completely transform the world and almost all the industries including education industry. Experiential learning will reach a new height with the help of virtual reality and augmented reality. There are many apps already available for this.

Machine Learning will help in personalizing the learning for individual student and redesigning the assessments. Artificial intelligence can help in tracking the mental steps which a student take to approach a problem and modify the feedback, exercises and explanations and intervention to promote self-regulation, self-monitoring, and self-explanation would revolutionize engagement.

Algorithms can help in clustering the students in similar groups based on their ways of learning and evaluating the outcome. Chatbots using Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning can answer common student’s queries. AI will free-up teachers and give more time for one-on-one interaction with the students and solve more complicated personal or behavioural issues or misconceptions.

Advanced Machine Learning using Text Mining and computer vision can also help in evaluating answer sheets which are in the form of free-form text. It does not mean AI will replace teachers. The role of the teachers will remain intact to take care of individual learning needs for every student.

Machine Learning can predict strengths and weakness of a student in particular subject, his learning pace and understanding level. By analyzing their test scores, worksheets, interactions and their course, helps in creating a significantly different and unique learning pathway which is customized and fun-filled. Tasks like tutoring, grading, giving individual feedback are pretty cumbersome, and AI tends to take that burden off of them. There are multiple ways of applying AI in the education system. One of the most widely accepted and used is Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) which have given a significant impact and made progress in past few years.

On the other side, artificial intelligence can also analyze teacher’s data (subject, content, methods, evaluation criteria, etc.) and give feedback to improve the teaching process. Teachers can take that feedback positively and takes necessary steps to improve.

AI can also predict the career path for the students which is very complicated and sensitive decision to be made. Currently, it takes all the factors including parent’s profession, society preference, market trend and highest paid jobs. But it does not take into consideration student’s interest, behaviour, likes dislikes, aptitude, etc. AI can take all these factors and predict a better career path for the student.

AI and Machine Learning can have a tremendous impact on the education industry. It can help us find the solutions for all the problems which were existing in the education industry but were getting neglected. It can revolutionize the entire education industry just based on past data and harnessing that to make data-driven and better decisions.

PwC also has two dedicated VR/AR labs in London where they help clients discover the technology and devise their business cases.

Liu starts by stating that transformation is a fact of daily life for business and organisations, not just a buzzword. It’s triggered by sudden crises, new competition, technological change, global opportunities, or simply the recognition that the world is rapidly changing around them – and they risk being left behind.

These major change initiatives can be complex, cumbersome and costly. But they don’t have to be that way – they can create new spaces for possibility—in markets, in operating models, and in employees’ hearts and minds – that yields profitable growth and breakthrough-level improvements.

This is the first in a series of blogs that PwC will be writing over the next few months, shining a light on the multitude of enterprise applications of virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR).

Liu makes many points worth reading. A summary is below:

• More organisations are grasping the potential of VR/AR to solve a wide range of their problems.
• This in turn is fuelling more investment.  
• From health and safety to medical and behavioural training custoemrs are energising and improving their people’s learning and development.
• Virtual reality and augmented reality connect and engage people at deeper, more meaningful levels
• The technology creates entirely new ways for people to experience the world around them.

VRAR gives us the ability to simulate challenging situations where team members can learn from mistakes, watch others’ reactions and fail in a safe environment.

VR/AR offers us four key benefits when applied to organisational training (these are explored in detail in the full article):

1. More memorable
2. Increased engagement
3. Reduced risk
4. Lower costs

It’s clear that VR/AR offers the potential to revolutionise organisation training. It offers a cost-effective way to provide better learning outcomes than traditional training methods. Participants can get closer to real-life experiences and hone techniques for managing difficult or dangerous situations.

Liu concludes by stating that getting started is less difficult than you may think. Start by discovering your training requirements and goals, then devise your business case and finally develop and deploy your solution.

The author quite rightly points out that there is also huge emphasis on enabling enterprise decision-makers to better understand how to leverage maximum ROI via AR initiatives.  This is in line with The AREA’s own ROI research which was directed by what enterprises were looking for.  Mozenix have their own infomration about ROI – the ROI of mobile AR: ARKIt verses ARCore.

“As more AR prototyping projects mature into full scale productions, the commercial benefits of the technology become increasingly clear.

For big businesses, kick-starting an AR initiative can bring about wide ranging commercial benefits including the creation of new revenue streams, the ability to grow existing streams of revenue and cost reduction. These commercial benefits, particularly in the context of industry 4.0, can be realised through the deployment of AR to bring about process efficiency gains and to enhance existing safety procedures and practices.”

The article states that now is a very good time to kick start projects in AR.

The piece goes on to mention a specific industrial example of Aberdeen based business Return to Scene Ltd who are deploying AR within the oil and gas sector.

Read the full article on the Mozenix blog https://mozenix.com/augmented-reality-industry-4-0-what-it-means-for-ctos/

But aside from smartphone-based apps such as Pokemon Go, and Google Translate, which can instantly translate street signs in foreign countries, adoption of the technology — which overlays virtual content on the real world — has been slow.

Google Glass has fizzled out, replaced by enterprise alternatives that mostly focus on niche problems such as warehouse logistics. Microsoft Hololens has had some high-profile uses, such as astronauts using it on the International Space Station. But it hasn’t yet made a big splash in the enterprise.

Read the full article here.