This article was written by Rusty Abernathy, Director, PTC Customer Success. Rusty has been with PTC for over 10 years, and has deep experience in product lifecycle management and augmented reality. Rusty has worked on business strategy, process and technology programs for some of the world's best known companies in the aerospace, defense, and with the US Government, bringing fresh vision and innovative thinking to each opportunity.
For service organizations, the benefits of augmented reality (AR) have been outlined repeatedly. The ability to transpose digital information onto physical objects when servicing a machine or product transforms how technicians get their work done and improves efficiency. But AR has another benefit for service organizations that often gets overlooked.
Within every service organization, technicians going out into the field need to be trained on how to perform a variety of different tasks to ensure that machines and products are working. Traditionally, the way technicians actually service a specific machine differs from what they are trained on. Very often, technicians end up relying on their own experience rather than their formal training. Because training is led by a different department within the company, it’s difficult to maintain materials and to stay up-to-date with changing products and best practices. Alignment between these two departments can be tricky, with training often falling a few steps behind. But here’s where AR changes the game.
Train the way you service with AR
To put it simply, AR offers businesses the opportunity to bridge the gap between how technicians are trained and how they service products. Why is it so simple? The answer is because you can use the exact same AR experience that you’ve built to service your products to train your technicians. This means that there is no additional work needed to leverage an AR experience for training purposes, making your training more efficient and accurate.
Let’s face it - if you are building an AR experience that a technician can use in the field to make service activities more effective, it’s important that the technician understands how to use the technology. You NEED training options – and AR offers benefits that traditional training methods don’t provide. What are some of the other benefits of leveraging AR for training? Here are a few:
Investing in an AR experience for your service organization can have massive benefits, and while there can be some upfront legwork involved with building it, the impact can be felt across your organization and company.
Want to learn more about how AR can benefit your business? Jim Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, and Michael Porter, Professor at Harvard, teamed up for the third time to co-author “Why Every Organization Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy.” Download the HBR report to learn everything you need to know to get started with AR.