Instructor led augmented reality training reaches more technicians per unit time with more effective content compared to current training solutions. The barrier to adoption is much lower than the assumed one device per trainee model and you can impact your entire organization rapidly without a significant time or financial investment.
By Matt Johnston
Photo courtesy of Design Interactive.
Maintenance operations in the waste industry have characteristics similar to that of the great freight and logistics industry, with firms having many maintenance facilities and technicians that are remote from central maintenance leadership. In both cases, there is pressure on technicians to perform service the right way the first time to increase uptime with high first time fix rates. They also both share a challenge of rapidly disseminating standard procedures and ensuring they are followed. Turnover, new parts, new products and the advent on next generation technologies put pressure on the ability to ensure compliance and standardization. Not unique, but more common in the waste industry, is the rate at which large firms acquire small and medium firms. While firms often run similar equipment, there will be differences and the change in procedure or policy will put pressure on first time fix rates.
This is where adoption of augmented reality (AR) software comes in—from head mounted displays to heads up displays, or even on mobile devices. A common application is to use AR to guide technicians’ step-by-step through a procedure or allow a technician to connect to a remote expert to get assistance on a challenging repair. In both cases, it would help the above problem. However, both of these applications require a fairly significant capital investment in hardware, possible IT infrastructure upgrades and the patience to roll the program out strategically. If you are a large firm of say 1,000 to 2,000 technicians and growing through acquisition, relying on such an approach may result in lower compliance rates from those firms you acquired than desired as you onboard them into the program, purchase and ship headsets and more. However, AR can be used outside the operational environment and also for training. AR is already commercially available for use in instructor-led and self-guided training and offers a lower barrier to entry for this type of use than for operational applications.
Training: Low Barrier to Entry but Immediate Dividends
Training is a clear application where a firm can see immediate dividends from augmented reality technology. By comparison to the operational environment where a technician would use software as support to complete a service task—for example, step-by-step guidance—training does not require hardware to be distributed to each active technician where a firm would incur higher capital costs. Step-by-step guidance also requires more investment of time in the creation of a multitude of procedures—and there are many—before a technician could consider the headset and AR software part of their toolbox. Consider the case of Mercedes. They revealed an investment in Microsoft HoloLens devices for their technicians where they would use the remote video collaboration feature to receive expert help for troubleshooting. This is a great application.
These devices cost $3,500 each and when you multiply by the number of technicians that will use it, the price adds up. Now there is no doubt that in the longer term, a firm like Mercedes where all technicians have a headset and use it for real time troubleshooting or follow a strict procedure, will result in a high compliance rate and high first time fix rate delivering a great return on investment. However, the initial investment and time to realize the ROI is a longer horizon than first adopting for training, and then growing towards other uses cases. You also have to consider factors such as turnover. You could be a firm of 200 technicians with an annual turnover of 25 percent, which is not uncommon. With this level of high turnover, your firm would be in a constant state of getting technicians accustomed to the Hololens. So again, training presents a low barrier to entry by comparison and likely a shorter payback period in order to explore expanding the use of the technology to other applications. If you did adopt the technology for training, what would be its use? How could a firm get the best value from what AR actually does well?
Make the Right Decision, Save Money
Augmented reality is great at providing actionable information—hands free at the point of need. That means that it can encourage interaction with equipment, a training aid or a part, while the trainee or an instructor can view information. However, it is the nature of the information that is valuable. An augmented reality headset such as the Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, NREAL and more, can present 3D information to the trainee in space. The trainee can view it, interact with it and walk around it in order to make decisions or, in the case of training, learn to make the right decision. Take the case of a firm that has invested in air disc brakes (ADB). An ADB service guide will suggest a technician needs to inspect a rotor for cracks and grooves or a brake pad for service damage. No doubt the service guide will describe these conditions, show a photo or present a line drawing. But, at the point of service, that guide is not readily available for what is now a subjective decision by the technician. The right decision and you retain a part and the value of its remaining life. The wrong decision and a part that should be replaced remains on the road and likely results in a comeback, decreasing first time fix rates and increasing costs.
A great application of AR is to train technicians to make the right decision using fantastic visual examples. Instead of describing or using a 2D photo, AR enables 3D models to show examples in great detail of wear or corrosion that is normal, side-by-side with what is abnormal and must be replaced. AR software is also much more accessible than paper-based or internet-accessed guides. You are not confined by the edges of the paper, only by the space around you. Content stored in the cloud or locally on a device can be accessed in seconds or made part of procedure or scenario-based training.
ADB is just one example, but imagine a tire analysis module where different types of tire wear can be presented alongside their likely root causes and recommended actions. You can build a fantastic mental set that the trainee can access anytime, anywhere, hands free, or reference when they are conducting an inspection or repair. This helps them make the right decision. The right decisions save you money. The money required to start with training is less than that for step-by-step service guidance, but it does not prevent growth toward that application.
Hands-On Training
The image most often associated with augmented reality is one of a single technician wearing some form of head mounted display. That image drives the assumption that most augmented reality software requires each technician to have access to a head mounted display and that the software primarily or only supports step-by-step guidance. This also leads those interested in the technology to assume a rather high cost to adoption, significant investment in training the workforce to use new software and upgrading information technology infrastructure. Further, they may struggle to envision a return on investment and delay their investment in augmented reality for maintenance training. However, instructor led training is not only available, but it is also a cost-effective use case for getting your firm started with augmented reality.
Augmented reality provides a digital overlay of information or visuals on the real world. This information can be videos, instructional text or images similar to presentation slides or animated 3D CAD files often referred to as holograms. The user typically wears a headset with a visor that they see through, unlike virtual reality that immerses the user in a virtual world. In AR, a technician uses the digital information to complete their work in actual equipment, a trainee is guided by digital instruction as they learn or an instructor references that digital content to educate trainees. In this latter use case, it has a low barrier to adoption, but can make a large impact on your entire organization with a lower initial investment.
Live, hands-on training is usually limited to 16 or less trainees because of limited access to equipment. In some classes, they fight to get a vantage point to see the instructor perform a task. Common video conferencing tools may increase the number of trainees, but are hard to integrate with webcams to provide a good vantage point. First person cameras are also hard to integrate with web-based video conferencing tools, often require high bandwidth and do not have the benefit of the digital content overlays.
Using augmented reality for instructor-led training gives the benefit of live streaming a first person perspective of hands-on training to a large, remote audience with the ability to use digital content as a reference. Assume your firm has experienced high comebacks related to brake services and part costs seem high due to suspected early part replacement. You choose a lesson focused on brake inspection to inform good decision making. An instructor dons a head mounted display and streams live to many remote technicians watching from a web accessible personal computer, laptop or tough book like device. During the course of explaining how to inspect a rotor for cracks or grooves, they look at a set of 3D holograms of rotors, each showing an example of wear. Unlike a 2D image that is often just a line drawing from a pdf document, the instructor is able to show realistic looking grooves and wear, walk around the hologram to show different perspectives and manipulate its size to focus attention. The whole time the instructor is able to reference an actual brake either on equipment or on a training stand to compare and contrast. There is no e-learning, video conferencing or slide presentation solution that gives you this level of flexibility while also introducing a valuable next generation technology to your workforce at a low barrier to entry.
Why is the barrier to entry low? To get started the only person who requires a headset is the instructor. The instructor is also the only one who must train to use the headset and augmented reality software. Augmented reality software is often very easy to use, requiring no special skills, so the time invested in training the instructor is as low as adopting any other solution. Technicians join the instructor-led sessions no differently than they would a typical video conferencing or webinar session. They get the benefit of better training content and compared to live hands-on training, their view is not impeded by other technicians. Finally, depending on the software chosen, your instructors can reach many facilities and, therefore, more technicians at the same time.
Instructor led augmented reality training reaches more technicians per unit time with more effective content compared to current training solutions. The barrier to adoption is much lower than the assumed one device per trainee model and you can impact your entire organization rapidly without a significant time or financial investment.
Adding Value
Training presents the lowest barrier to entry and it can deliver a significant impact on the firms bottom line. The startup costs are relatively small compared to choosing an operational use case. The best part is that training enables you and your firm to gain familiarity, build best practices, and then grow toward other great applications that add value to your operations. | WA
Matt Johnston is the Division Head of Commercial Solution at Design Interactive (Orlando, FL) and chairs the augmented and virtual reality task force for the American Trucking Associations Technology and Maintenance Council. He has worked with augmented and virtual reality for more than a decade and leads development of AUGMENTOR®—an instructor led, and self-guided training platform enhanced by augmented reality. Matt can be reached at [email protected].