November 14, 2017
Watch Picavi’s Johanna Bellenberg talk about head-worn devices with the very people implementing the technology at Walmart, GE Transportation, Gensler, USPS, and FM Global. The group shares the insights, “aha” moments, and limitations realized in implementing AR/VR glasses and headsets; and come to a common consensus on the value of these technologies especially for employee training.
AR/VR is helping the Postal Service meet the demands of a changing digital world, in which its 20-year-old fleet of vehicles needs fixing and replacing and more and more part-time employees need fast training. Passing information from carrier to carrier via a physical book containing information on every route isn’t an efficient method, not with millions of delivery points each day. Using AR/VR for vehicle maintenance and to eliminate 50% of training time for new employees is what it takes to keep the Postal Service alive.
As there isn’t a solid use case yet for HMDs in the retail world, Walmart is using VR at its training academies to simulate exceptional customer experience problems you wouldn’t want to create in a real store and shopping events that only happen once a year. VR is ideal as you “can get multiple reps over and over.” For Walmart, how associates feel on the floor is important. While allowing them to be hands-free and heads-up in stores might help them engage more confidently with customers, VR training goes a long way towards increasing their confidence before they have to face shoppers.
FM Global, a commercial property risk insurer that counts one out of every three Fortune 1000 companies as a customer, is using AR for remote engineering surveys of client facilities and VR as a selling tool. If political restrictions make it difficult to send out a field engineer, FM Global sends a pair of smart glasses to the customer, having a remote expert guide the customer through the task. VR has also proven to be a compelling medium for convincing policyholders to take the proper measures in case of a flood or fire by showing them the potential damage.
At GE Transportation, training doesn’t always mean a brand new person needing to learn a brand new process, not when you’re dealing with 20,000 locomotive SKUs that ship all over the world. So, GE is using AR/VR to design and build kits of locomotive parts for operators, thinking through the presentation of these kits and how they align to manufacturing or service processes. From a plant layout perspective, VR is also incredibly useful for designing and planning operations.
Finally at Gensler, visualization technologies are impacting how architects design and develop structures of every kind. The architecture and design firm is also considering how these tools will impact the places it designs as those buildings and environments mature. The environments we work in are increasingly contributing to the jobs we do, so Gensler is thinking about the future: AR/VR will influence the structures we design (not just help design them) because of the way they will fundamentally change how we consume information.
