Proof of Concept, Pilot, Implement.
Industrial enterprises increasingly start exploring and piloting AR applications in their engineering workflows. It has become apparent that AR is a productivity booster, especially in the manufacturing industry. Nevertheless, a lot of companies are still wondering, how to tackle their AR roll out in the most efficient way. The crunch point lies right at the beginning of the AR journey: choosing the best partner for your AR use case.
When it comes to creating interest for a new technology – or at a further advanced stage – introducing it within the organization, different stakeholders need to get under one hat. This oftentimes proves to be difficult. It is demanding to get people onboard: not only those, who are in charge, but also the colleagues, who will be using the technology. Furthermore, several ongoing processes, which need to be changed with the implementation of the new technology, may create uncertainty.
Partner up. But with whom?
In order to tackle these first challenges, enterprises keep an eye out for a partner. The choice might not be easy as the market is constantly growing. Large consultancies like Accenture, Deloitte or McKinsey compete with AR companies, which are oftentimes start-ups or medium-sized companies. These companies take up the role of a consultant and a vendor at the same time.
Many industrial AR adopters tend to seek advice from large consulting companies. This way they get their processes analyzed and adopted by an objective third party. Accenture & Co. provide their clients with very experienced experts for the particular field they advise in. However, the drawback of a consulting firm as a partner is that they don’t develop the solution itself. This is where AR companies like Holo-Light differ.
Experience out of a Daily AR Development Practice
We at Holo-Light advise our customers specifically in industrial AR/VR. This is what we do every day since 2015. We create, we develop, and we integrate day in day out. Over the years we built a great network and gained important experiences in collaborating with our partners like BMW, BASF or Magna. Internationally, we have a proven track record with Nissan in Japan being one of our flagship projects in quality assurance. By now Holo-Light implemented more than 50 Industry 4.0 projects and received numerous awards both in Europe and North America. Overcoming different kinds of technical hurdles in the past and in the present, makes us a strong and reliable partner.
From our point of view, being as close as possible to the solution itself and to the technology, offers considerable benefits. What is possible, what is not? As functionalities and use case scenarios of AR applications become increasingly complex, expectations need to become very clear right from the beginning.
The Holo-Consult Approach
Once a customer approaches us with an idea or a problem, it starts with a conversation. We will ask you a lot of questions in order to understand your situation perfectly. Tailored to your specific needs, we recommend a 1-2 days workshop, in which we identify existing pain points that could be tackled with the use of AR/VR.
Based on the findings we create a scalable scenario with the customer and develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) application. The PoC is seen as an isolated project, which serves as a reliable basis for the further AR implementation. Feedback loops and iterations of the PoC application provide us with data about acceptance, possible restrictions, usability and challenges in integration. Since we have the claim that all our scenarios are measurable, we also analyze the “return on investment”.
What follows is a detailed evaluation of all the data and learnings from the PoC. After the analysis has been done and changes to the concept have been made, we develop an integratable solution. The implementation includes a proper IT integration, an onboarding of all users as well as a detailed documentation of the processes.
Conclusion
Increased manufacturing output by 74%. Reduced training time from 4hrs to 15min. Decreased quality fail-rate by 85%. These real outcomes show us that our approach – with all the testing and measuring included – is a very efficient one. Approach us with your questions, ideas or problems – we are happy to help!
