Inglobe Technologies announced today the release of a new whitepaper titled SMART MAINTENANCE : An Augmented Reality Platform for Training and Field Operations in the Manufacturing Industry.
The white paper discusses a selection of Inglobe Technologies Augmented Reality (AR) solutions to enhance both training and operations in different industrial maintenance scenarios.
AR applications provide a technology that has the potential to support and speed up training, while at the same time increasing performance and effectiveness levels. Some statistics suggest performance improvements up to 30% with involved employees reporting higher levels of engagement. Applications of AR that support technicians in the field have the potential of reducing costs up to 25% throughout quicker maintenance or component substitution, identification and setup of new connections, solution of faults and misconfigurations, with less burden on backend personnel and system resources. Additionally, thanks to the information that operators collect on the field, the AR technology contributes to an improvement of the quality of enterprise data.
Development of AR applications in an industrial setting is a complex task, made even more challenging by the need to leverage the full power of native platforms (iOS, Android, Windows). This is certainly the case of modern, cutting edge AR mobile applications. Inglobe Technologies simplifies this complex task by providing software components, technology, expertise and customizable solutions that help managing complexity with reduced time from requirement analysis to deployment.
In order to present and educate on the software components needed to develop an effective AR solution for industrial maintenance, the document offers an overview of the challenges, enabling technologies and required solutions.
The document also clarifies how, according to the authors, the adoption of an AR strategy (i.e. a strategy for the introduction of AR for industrial maintenance), is not a consequence of an improvised choice, but rather the result of a path that requires the definition of a?Roadmap?for the development of Enterprise Class AR solutions.
The document addresses the challenge of making industrial maintenance more efficient under two main respects, i.e. the intelligent support of field force operations and training; section 1 introduces the dimensions from which the need for developing a Smart Maintenance solution derives; section 2 introduces the technologies that enable AR solutions for maintenance, including positioning technologies, pattern recognition, tracking and artificial vision as they allow to create effective and enhanced industrial solutions; section 3 offers an overview on the architecture of the proposed solution; a generic use case which is relevant in this context is discussed in section 4; section 5 discusses an approach to estimate the ROI (return on investment) by clarifying the reference parameters for evaluating quantitatively the benefits that the adoption of an AR strategy for maintenance provides; finally, section 6 offers an approach and Roadmap for the design and implementation of an enterprise class industrial Augmented Reality solution.
The english version of the white paper can be downloaded from here: Smart Maintenance 041213_en