Scaling AR Solutions to Transform Business

ew Technologies For The New Normal

The digital world is evolving quicker than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates pre-existing trends in digital transformations. Businesses need solutions to reduce complexity while simultaneously optimising a distributed workforce. Extended realties such as AR and VR could play a pivotal role to enable the workforce to perform at a higher level and complete work more efficiently, however this is only possible if businesses are offered solutions that make it easier for them to scale.

In manufacturing, AR is predominantly used in product assembly, quality assurance, training,  equipment maintenance and real-time expert help. In general industry statistics, there is a range of ROI and KPI improvements to be made, however, when it is used properly, AR has shown to drop manufacturing error rates to almost zero, deliver a 30-40% decrease in time spent to achieve field service resolutions, and offer 15-35% productivity gains in warehouse picking processes. 

Baker Hughes, an energy technology company based in the US, created and deployed Phantom View, an innovative enhanced reality software platform, which used commercial AR and VR headsets to support remote training, collaboration, operations management, site walkthroughs to name a few of its features. It’s clear to see that industry leaders are using AR and VR to optimise operations and get ahead of the competition. 

One of the enhanced-reality-based health and safety training features in Baker Hughes’ Phantom View platform, streams full-scale 3D models of sites, accurately copied from real sites with realistic physics, to an AR headsets. The aim of the AR simulation is to evaluate employees’ abilities to assess health and safety risks on a site before visiting it. Baker Hughes replaced the paper based evaluation with an interactive AR simulation, successfully gamifying the learning experience, making the training more engaging and effective.

Selecting An AR Solution 

Choosing an AR solution can often be a difficult task when there are so many different elements to it, the next section will break down some potential elements to look into when choosing an AR solution that is right for your business. 

Resources And Time

Businesses don’t always have the resources or time to create and scale their own AR app, so connecting and utilising AR partners can help to scale your businesses in a much easier and efficient way than ever before. AR development companies can show you the way to finding the best solution for your business, whether it's web or app based, the solutions available to businesses are endless. 

Flexibility

To remain relevant, businesses need to move fast and evolve the way in which we work, flexibility is key. With the current pandemic, there is the potential for a dramatic and immediate need for AR assisted training and upskilling in the next few months. After sudden and disruptive closures due to COVID-19, businesses are now starting to reopen and ramp up productivity. 

This means it’s likely that millions in the workforce will be returning to work and at a fast pace than ever before. To accommodate this, businesses will need to provide their staff with accelerated training as new safety processes and procedures develop. By providing solutions that are implemented in a device and cloud-agnostic environment, will allow businesses to quickly adapt to the new and changing work environment.

Platform

Finding the correct operating system is essential for businesses to use and deploy AR effectively. For example, Android’s operating system and user interface are simple to customise and easy to use. An ecosystem that’s open and cloud-agnostic provides businesses with the flexibility to deploy a software platform on-premise or across multiple cloud services. 

To create a truly scalable AR solution, businesses must consider all the elements to incorporate to the application that will allow for business grade scalability, which is both easy to manage and to deploy.  Having scalable solutions is critical in showing ROI for businesses and with the digital world evolving quicker than ever, now is the time to incorporate AR into your business.