Redefining Industry 4.0 Training with Immersive Learning
Published on : Sunday 06-09-2020
Arun G Vaswani elaborates upon how AR/VR technologies help industry as it evolves and undergoes digital transformation.
Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) is one of the key enablers of factories of the future. Implementation of AR/VR technologies is on the rise and this is making a huge impact on the world of corporate training.
Why AR/VR training?
-To maximise employee productivity and efficiency through advanced learning, operational insight and automation.
-When it is too dangerous or expensive to train in the real world.
-Round-the-clock availability to ensure no disruption of daily tasks.
-Consistent training content delivered to all teams.
Your people are your greatest asset. People are your most valuable investment. Yet the way we prepare today’s workforce is outdated. Employees are not engaged and training impact is not measurable. Until now. Evolving job roles prioritise hybrid skill sets that merge digital skills like effective communication, collaboration, and creativity, and may require employees to reskill in order to thrive.
Augmentastic helps to recreate reality as immersive experiences that are as effective as being in the real situation. Our solutions promote experiential learning by simplifying complex concepts and making them easy to understand. Our immersive learning solution provides less cognitive load and learning time is reduced to a third.
It helps in various training practices such as what to do if a fire occurs in the workplace or how to work safely onsite in a hazard prone area, production or manufacturing line processes. This has applications in different industrial sectors – Manufacturing, Aerospace, Medical, Automotive, Defence, Oil & Gas, Energy and Utilities, etc. Experiential learning has long been
argued as the most effective way to learn, and studies have shown that learning through experience increases learning quality and improves retention by up to 75 per cent. AR/VR simulations can be far more cost effective, simplified and give better insight than instructor-led training for standard procedures as well as low probability, high consequence events. Augmentastic designed simulation can replicate situational experiences in elaborate environments that are impossible to deliver in real life without physically transporting the student to remote rigs, locations or equipment. Our solutions help the technicians get hands-on training experience similar to real life. The technicians are trained in a simulated, immersive work environment without stopping the high volume production lines with no disruption to the production line.
Because of the immersive and realistic nature of VR, it’s very well placed to enable companies to create real life scenarios and situations that would either be impossible – or very costly – to replicate in real life. This is of particular relevance if you are part of a training team at a company looking to create VR/AR offerings for your operations and maintenance (O&M) technicians, providing solutions. Your training programmes, enhanced by AR/VR, will now give an immersive experience to the operator, preparing him to be the best even before he sets foot on the shop floor. Maintenance activities will become simpler and will be available in local languages, reducing the dependency on experts.
AR/VR technologies in training programs have seen improvements in employee retention and productivity. AR technology is a great tool to use as an aid for on-the-job technical training scenarios. VR can be used to provide life-like simulations for various task under safety training or to teach how to operate complex machinery.
Immersive Learning can accelerate training programs by providing instant familiarity with real- world scenarios once on the job, and ongoing, repetitive learning throughout an employee’s career for everything from operational efficiency, empathy and customer service, and even dangerous situations.
Our capacity to maintain our role in this rapid growth cycle of technological advancement hinges on a similar law of acceleration being applied to human ability. We must transform the way we transfer knowledge, reduce the time we need to learn, and ace the communication skills that machines cannot compete with.
Today, children in the K-12 sector face a mammoth of information on their platter. Without learning experiences that are engaging, retention and application of knowledge are uphill struggles. Immersive learning is an approach that seeks to engage students at a deeper level of understanding and learning. This can be achieved by a stimulated learning environment that often features games, stories, and interactive content mimicking real-life. Not only does this create an enjoyable experience for students but it also results in an increased retention power. With an immersive learning approach, students can massively expand their knowledge and application of academic concepts.
Utilising XR technologies to upskill people requires the freedom of hands-on implementation as well. No matter how detailed your upskilling strategy, it is important to ensure that employees can test out their new skills before bringing them to the job floor. The success of XR immersive experience is seen in the quality of the final project that a student pursues (not necessarily one that’s imposed by the company).
Upskilling employees has become more critical as new technologies like AI automate certain functions that people have traditionally handled. This training can become a differentiator for an organisation, offering an immersive experience more clearly focused on employee personal growth and career path development.
Activities such as simulations, embodiment, gamification and real-life scenarios, help in applying theoretical knowledge to practical situations and practice learning-by-doing, which eventually leads to better learning and understanding of the subject matter. Virtual Reality has become a complete game-changer in both application and practice.
The right upskilling strategy will account for employees’ learning predilections and their own knowledge about the field they want to upskill in. And the training that follows will leave them feeling better prepared for whatever upheavals the industry might experience as it evolves and undergoes digital transformation.
To sum up, these are the reasons and hence why it is so critical to factor in XR technologies when planning your Learning & Training roadmap, ensuring that the skills your employees gain last well. Staying on top of the latest training trends to keep your workforce competitive is certainly smart thinking, but jumping directly from a traditional training to virtual or augmented reality might exclude a lot of your workforce. By following the roadmap, your team will be able to deliver next-gen training immersion and retention, while still being accessible via multiple methods.
Arun G Vaswani, visionary entrepreneur, is the Founder & CEO of augmented reality company Augmentastic, based in Pune, India. He has more than a decade of expertise in UI/UX design, research and application development for desktop, web, mobiles, tabs, etc. Arun is focused on delivering new and innovative products to clients and specialises in all things digital from website development right through to Augmented Reality. His first startup, Lexicon Creations, is a multimedia design company that provides web, print, online marketing, social media marketing, video and corporate branding services. He guides companies with a need for a corporate identity or online presence into leading positions in their industry. He does this by listening intently to their needs and then develop a complete, well- thought out, custom strategy, providing user-friendly interfaces, project management and a vast understanding of digital and visual communication.
