As the workplace technologies and processes rapidly evolve, our workforces must adapt and grow their expertise to make full use of them. In today’s modern manufacturing environment, upskilling and cross-skilling have become the norm. Companies that rely on paper documentation, outdated training methods, or deep institutional memory have found themselves left behind by this rapid pace of change.

To improve their workforce agility, industrial companies are turning to AR-powered solutions like Vuforia work instructions that can transform employee training and skills development programs and improve overall productivity – even as their businesses continues to evolve.

Take inspections, for example. Two-thirds of manufacturers still rely on manual paper instructions and checklists to guide employees through inspections, according to Quality Magazine industry polls. Many companies struggle to enter, store, and review this content—with errors and costly rework as an inevitable result.

For too long, frontline employees have settled for traditional training techniques: paper documentation, training classes, mentoring, and coaching. And while these methods have their place, they aren’t keeping pace with increasingly complex processes, products, and operations. These traditional methods certainly haven’t fared any better in this time of remote work, travel bans, and social distancing.

PTC’s Vuforia AR portfolio is transforming the creation and distribution of AR work instructions. By using AR, companies can now keep up with the industry’s ever-changing technology and workflows, empowering their employees to learn new skills and stay current on the latest best practices. Vuforia Expert Capture offers SaaS-based AR solutions that are easy to deploy, boast a fast time-to-value, and offer a compelling alternative to outdated, paper-based job aids and training materials.

By using Vuforia work instructions, companies experience:

• Increased workforce efficiency
• Greater flexibility for remote training and skills development
• Improved traceability, compliance, and continuous improvement
• Greater inspection reliability and product quality
• Enterprise security, control, and scalability of their content

While AR work instructions have proven highly effective for the user and for the business as a whole, the benefits don’t stop there. With AR, it’s easy to create, update, and publish new instructions if conditions or best practices change, reducing the burden on subject matter experts (SMEs) and internal training and L&D teams responsible for maintaining the information.

Let’s take a closer look at Vuforia Expert Capture to learn how this product works to streamline AR work instructions.

Vuforia Expert Capture

Vuforia Expert Capture is an out-of-the-box solution for capturing the tacit domain knowledge that lives in your tenured experts’ heads. Using Expert Capture, SMEs can capture their work on video via digital eyewear (like RealWear or HoloLens), narrating their process as they go to share procedural guidance and best practices with the viewer, then easily transform those captures into step-by-step digital work instructions.

This means the best practices of your subject matter experts can be made available to any employee across the enterprise, enabling them to effectively and efficiently perform that same procedure and turning your experts’ best practices into everybody’s standard practices. Plus, it accelerates productivity for new workers by delivering expert guidance when and where they need it, without slowing down their experienced colleagues or sacrificing safety and compliance.

Seeing a Better Future with Vuforia Work Instructions

Seven out of 10 employees in the global workforce are on the frontlines. And they need the latest information in order to do their jobs accurately and efficiently. To be successful, companies must close the knowledge and skills gaps between knowledge workers, tenured experts, and newer employees in the field and on the shop floor. With AR-powered Vuforia work instructions, the solution is right within their view.