Beyond Emergencies: Making Mixed Reality a Standard Tool for Industrial Success

When discussing mixed reality (MR) in industrial settings, most conversations center around its use during equipment malfunctions or downtime. However, our most successful customers understand that MR's true value lies in its integration into everyday operations. It’s not a tool to be placed in a special case with a sign reading, "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS."

Instead, it should become a trusted go-to tool for accessing information at the point of need, delivering its largest impact when it becomes a standard operating procedure within operations. One area in particular where MR can achieve huge savings is in the reduction of downtime.

Mixed reality, or MR, is the blending of the physical and virtual worlds to enhance interactivity and knowledge transfer. It requires the user to don a headset, but unlike virtual reality that person has full sensory perception of the surrounding environment. 

Companies suffer huge financial costs because of unexpected stoppages. In October 2023, a “Value of Reliability” survey from the Swiss engineering giant ABB said that more than two-thirds of industrial businesses experience unplanned outages at least once a month, costing the “typical business” close to US $125,000 an hour.

Looking at that another way, in a standard workday, a severe work stoppage could cost the average company a million dollars a day.

Avoiding and minimizing downtime is standard operating procedure for 21st Century industrial groups, and MR can help you keep your machines humming. Incorporating MR into operational strategies is crucial for maintaining competitive advantage and achieving long-term efficiency in industrial settings.

Understanding the Dynamics of Downtime

We mentioned above that a standard stoppage can cost a typical business about $125,000 an hour. But what we have to remember is that a work stoppage isn’t always caused by a calamitous breakdown in a machine. It can be a piece wearing out. Or a wire breaking. It could even be based around new equipment coming into a factory, resulting in a knowledge gap on how to install it correctly until an OEM tech shows up, which may be delayed.

No technology will completely eradicate these annoying and costly problems, but regular use of MR solutions can go a long way to minimizing their impact. Here’s how:

Mixed reality is an unparalleled technology in allowing frontline workers to access critical information when/where they need it while also enabling collaboration with in-house experts or people from other companies anywhere in the world. The technician or engineer working on a piece of equipment merely has to put on a headset and connect with the instructor, expert or colleague, and they’re able to work together on the same piece of equipment. Hands free. In real time. With a vast library of resources at their disposal.

The functionality of mixed reality is constantly improving to assist in these sorts of tasks. For example, RemoteSpark has recently seen additions to its capabilities with now available Multiparty Calling and access through any browser with our Web App features.

The Web App lets you connect to frontline workers on the go, so you can deliver real-time guidance from your PC, mobile, or tablet without needing an MR headset at your end.

Multiparty Calling lets the frontline worker access multiple experts at once to solve any challenge they may face. If they need different support for specific tasks, they can swap experts, remain connected, and get the job done promptly and properly.

By enhancing real-time communication, troubleshooting, and problem-solving, MR enables workers to address and resolve issues quickly, leading to improved response times, proactive maintenance, and substantial cost savings. The workers and engineers in your plants (regardless of where they are in the world) can work closely with OEM reps to regularly inspect equipment and ensure all machinery is running smoothly. Or more proactively, they can address little problems, glitches, or bottlenecks before they become big problems.

Of course, mixed reality will not do away with downtime entirely. No matter what an industrial company or organization does, there will always be emergencies that halt operations. In such cases, mixed reality can usually help you get up and running again far more quickly than old-school methods like phone calls or emails. A front-line worker armed with an MR solution and collaborating with head office or an OEM exec is the best way to tackle these sorts of emergency problems.

Once again, getting these problems fixed quickly and getting the gears in your machinery turning again equates to massive savings for your company.

Implementation of Mixed Reality

Bringing MR into your day-to-day operations doesn’t have to be difficult, and we have outlined step-by-step procedures for doing so in previous blogs. Check out our articles “Selecting the Right Use Case For Your Mixed Reality Pilot” and “Transitioning Mixed Reality Pilots into Essential Deployments”. 

These articles will show you how to:

• Select the right use case for effective MR pilots.

• Structure a team to ensure your pilots are effective.

• Evolve beyond pilot projects so MR becomes a widespread impactful tool within the operations.

We don’t want to belabor this point but it’s really important. Employing MR in your operations can reduce costly downtime, but you will only come to fully understand the benefits if you carry out effective pilot projects. Finding the right use cases and assembling the right teams for these pilots are essential steps in adopting this technology that is very likely already being employed successfully by your leading competitors.

Mixed Reality in Use

A food producer, learned the value of MR during the pandemic, when it ordered essential new equipment and received packaged machinery that had to be assembled. The European OEM’s experts couldn’t visit the plant, and the food producer’s engineers couldn’t travel to meet the OEM. They used RemoteSpark so they could all work together to assemble the machinery and make sure it was running optimally.

At a later time, the producer had issues with a sifter for its starch-conditioning system, within two hours they had technicians from the OEM in the U.S. on RemoteSpark so they could address the problems together. They ran some tests with the technician on a mixed reality call, and he identified several changes needed so they could work in optimum conditions. A senior engineer remarked: “RemoteSpark has brought technicians from all over the world into our facility.”

The Bottom-Line

Unexpected work stoppages are horrible experiences. Aside from the immense financial costs, frustrated workers are standing around waiting for repairs. Tensions can mount with your OEMs if the right part isn’t readily available. Operations in other departments, like shipping and customer service, can be impacted.

The proper use of mixed reality can help you alleviate these headaches, and bring other benefits to your operations. MR can help your organization accelerate its digital transformation, improve productivity, and have a more fulfilled workforce. The key is to adopt this technology properly.