One of augmented reality’s (AR) proposed beneficiaries is the enterprise. That can take many forms including data visualization in corporate settings, or software to create customer-facing AR experiences for brands. Impact will also occur through AR visualization in industrial settings.
The latter includes things like assembly and maintenance in manufacturing facilities. The idea is that AR’s line-of-sight visualization can guide front-line workers. Compared to the “mental mapping” they otherwise do with 2D instructions, line-of-sight support makes them more productive.
This plays out in a few ways including speed, effectiveness, error reduction and safety. These micro efficiencies can add up to worthwhile bottom-line impact in large-scale operations. Macro benefits meanwhile include lower strain and turnover, leading to higher morale and institutional knowledge.
These benefits were examined in ARtillery Intelligence’s February 2018 report, Enterprise XR: Impacting the Bottom Line. But since that analysis, we’ve tracked several growing challenges to AR’s viability and implementation in industrial operations. The picture may not be as rosy as we all thought.
For example, though all of the advantages outlined above are valid, it’s challenging to get to the point of realizing them. Practical and logistical barriers stand in the way such as organizational inertia, politics, change management and fear of new technology among key stakeholders.
The biggest symptom of these stumbling blocks is the dreaded “pilot purgatory.” As its name suggests, and as you may have heard in AR industry narratives, this is when AR is adopted at the pilot stage, but never progresses to full deployment. It’s the biggest pain point in industrial AR today.
In a recent analysis with Re’Flekt, ARtillery Intelligence identified the sources and solution areas for these challenges: the “Three P’s.” Comprising People, Product & Process, they’re the top areas where effective AR implementation strategies should focus in order to avoid pilot purgatory.
For product, it’s all about addressing real operational pain points, uncovered through ground-level research. For people, it’s about customizing AR’s ROI story to individuals at all levels of the organization. For process, it’s about multi-disciplinary prototyping rather than top-down innovation.
We’ll go deeper on all of these in the coming pages, including demonstrable case studies. We’ll examine industrial AR’s benefits and barriers. This entails everything from product planning to internal communications refinement. The name of the game is to set up industrial AR to succeed.