The PTC products being adopted include the ThingWorx IoT platform, Windchill product lifecycle management and ThingWorx Studio augmented reality solutions. RMIT is also expanding its relationship with PTC value-added partner LEAP Australia.

RMIT has identified a recent surge in demand for graduates with skills in Industry 4.0, including the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and augmented reality (AR) for the enterprise.

Pier Marzocca, Professor and Associate Dean in the University’s School of Engineering, said RMIT believed insights from industrial IoT data, combined with AR for in-context display, would be critical to the business transformations that will arise from Industry 4.0.

RMIT also plans to use its ThingWorx technologies to expand its collaboration with local industry partners, especially companies without sufficient resources to comprehensively harness the transformative nature of Industry 4.0 for their business, according to PTC.

The article can be read in full here.

If you think these types of devices are not being used in the workplace, think again. In 2016, according to Alvarez, companies gave employees approximately 202,000,000 wearable devices. That number is expected to grow to half-a-million by 2021.

Benefits and uses of wearables at work for operational efficiencies are outlined, as are the drawbacks of using them, including security. The advice is to set some policies which govern the workplace wearable devices that are inevitably coming to more and more workplaces.

Things to consider include:

• Who owns the device and the data?
• How is the data stored and used?
• Who can access the data?
• What are the employees’ expectations of what the device can do?
• How will you prevent abuse by employees?
• How will you prevent abuse by the company?

Questions to help companies develop a code of conduct around devices are offered:

• How is the data collected?
• Where is the data stored?
• How will the data be used?
• Who owns the data?
• Can the data can be sold

The article can be read in full here:

For more information and advice, please feel free to browse the information on The AREA’s website for research and information on AR enterprise security or reach out to speak with us about membership.

A recent article on BrainXchange lists a number of enterprises that are utilising wearable technology in order to create beneficial customer service schemes.

The list includes the following companies:

• Audi = using Virtual Reality headsets to allow potential buyers to visualise the cars in a range of simulated landscapes. They partnered with Zerolight to produce virtual scenery that wouldn’t be possible to see in real life, e.g. viewing cars on the moon. Ford is also developing a VR platform in addition to AR of hologram display cars.
• Lifestyle Home Builders = a Virginia-based company that is using VR in custom home building and buying. They provided customers with the experience of virtually viewing versions of completed houses via a VR headset by adapting building information modelling and off-the-shelf software.
• Cincinnati Airport (CVG) = recently trialled Samsung Gear S3 Smart Watches to aid janitors in keeping ahead with clean-ups and supplies. They partnered with Hipaax to integrate data from sensors in restrooms with their TaskWatch application; if successful, this will be released in 2018.
• Norden Machinery = a Swedish company that provides tube filling for cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. They partnered with XMReality to enable employees to provide remote support for their customers via use of Smart Glasses.
• Air New Zealand = the airline partnered with Dimension Data to produce an AR solution using the Hololens to help stewards to anticipate passengers’ needs. Emirates is also considering how their staff can use AR glasses to enhance the passengers’ experience.
• PulteGroup = one of the US’s largest homebuilders. They are utilising VR headsets to enable customers to take virtual tours of potential future homes where the model houses are as yet unfinished.

In an opinion piece this week by Zdnet.com, Augmented Reality is discussed.  The premise of the article is that all technology organizations in the Enterprise must start learning about Augmented Reality.

Questions such as ‘What’s the difference between AR, VR and Mixed Reality?’ ‘What kind of investment is needed to make this vision to fruition?’ ‘What’s the time frame for all this to happen?’ and ‘How many brands today prepare for this inevitable future?’ are asked and answered and the book ‘The Fourth Transformation’ is discussed in detail.

According to the article in the next few years, medicine, training and education, customer and field service and transportation will change as the technology companies, telecom suppliers and governments build the infrastructure needed to support a wide-scale adoption of Augmented Reality.

Although AR requires a significant technology infrastructure, the article states, the business case must drive how you deploy the technology in the enterprise. For example, if your company provides field service, the first step is figuring out how augmented reality can help your organization better serve its customers.

To read the full article click here.

In a recent article this week by Silicon, Wearables in the workplace are discussed:

• What are the potential benefits enterprise could receive if they used wearables in the work place?
• What are the barriers to adoption?
• What are the opportunities businesses could achieve by using them in the workplace?

This article discussed the market with information from the IDC stating how much the market has grown, competitors and the overall performers in that market. Broken down into 3 sections the market, hurdles and concerns and benefits are discussed.

Benefits of wearables in the workplace mentioned in the report:

• Help boost collaboration
• Increased efficiency
• Track location of personnel
• Provide health information

“Wearables can provide major benefits for businesses, if deployed correctly,” said Chas Moloney, director of Ricoh UK. “One of the most obvious areas is health and wellbeing initiatives for staff, with numerous applications to support with fitness and working patterns already widely available. But there are also clear business cases for wearable devices being deployed into office-based environments. For example giving workers instant access to data and managing complex processes could easily be achieved through a smart watch or other device.” 

Barrett J. Brunsman, Staff reporter for the Cincinnati Business Courier, highlights how Procter & Gamble Co. “played a lead role in the development of the world’s first guidelines on functional requirements for augmented reality hardware and software” when working with 64 other organizations to develop functional guidelines for augmented reality in the manufacturing sector.

Read the full article…

IndustryWeek highlights the efforts of 65 organizations to help shape the future of augmented reality in the manufacturing sector. The functional guidelines released Tuesday will help companies within the AR ecosystem to develop products and solutions for industrial enterprise users.  

Read the full article…

Matt Hamblen, Senior Editor for Computerworld, writes about the hardware and software guidelines for using augmented reality (AR) on the manufacturing floor. These guidelines were published Tuesday in a joint effort between UI Labs and the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).  

Read the full article…

 ^{[Photo credit: Turkletom / Flickr]}

Information about the IoT Solutions World Congress (Barcelona, 03 – 05 October 2017).  Calls for papers closes. on April 15 2017.  This event is the leading international event that links the Internet of Things with industry. Its congress will focus on IoT solutions for industries and use cases in six dedicated areas: Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities, Connected Transport, Healthcare, Buildings & Infrastructure, and Open Industry (Retail, Agriculture, Mining, Hospitality and other industries).

The event will also offer multiple networking opportunities and activities, such as our IoT Solutions Awards Gala, a Hackathon, side events organized by event partners, etc.

Whether you are an enterprise end user, an organization looking for sales leads, a researcher, an association member, or a developer, the IoT Solutions World Congress offers a high return on investment.

The IoTSWC is organized by Fira de Barcelona in partnership with the Industrial Internet Consortium, the Industrial IoT organization founded by AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, IBM, and Intel to bring together organizations and technology with the goal of accelerating the growth, adoption, and widespread use of industrial IoT.

More details about the event can be found at: http://www.iotsworldcongress.com/

An article published this week by IT Brief discusses why IT professionals should care about Augmented Reality.  Augmented Reality consumes lots of data but mobile phones, BYOD and shadow IT has prepared IT professionals for an Augmented Reality revolution.

This author believes that the biggest problem IT professionals will face will be data. Although most IT Professionals can deal with data problems at the moment, the article believe that this will soon change due to AR consuming and transmitting large amounts of data. This problem may stop mainstream enterprises from using AR. However even when a few AR applications make it into mainstream enterprise usage, data requirements may be seen to triple or even quadruple which means IT should budget for growth.

Many BYO policies can extend to AR devices with the same application and network platforms tracking how employees use them on the network. And mobile phone security measures such as sandboxing, penetration testing and compartmentalisation can also be equally applicable to any AR device.

The advice for IT professionals is steady provision of bandwidth and data storage ahead of future growth, maintain rigorous monitoring of their organisational endpoints, and keep cyber security threats in the front of their minds.