5 Reasons Industrial Enterprises Should

Get Started on Augmented Reality Today

 Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30 percent of large enterprises will adopt augmented reality (AR)
solutions across multiple business functions. In addition, an ABI Research survey showed that 42
percent of U.S.-based industrial companies currently use smart glasses as part of their workflows.

There are many factors that are driving this rapid growth. Competitive pressures in brand
differentiation, faster time to service, and first time to quality certainly contribute. AR solutions
have also continued to mature while device manufacturers have worked to bring second and third
generation smart glasses to market. Together, these forces have unlocked a plethora of new use
cases and allowed for AR to expand into more verticals.

What this means for enterprises is that AR is no longer simply being kicked around the research
lab. It is, in fact, having a profound impact on today’s most demanding industrial production
environments—with real business results to show for it. We’ve outlined five important advantages
for why organizations should adopt immediately.

Utilities disaster response technician walks up to site to document situation and determine
what equipment is needed to restore antenna.

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1 Delivered via both mature and emerging devices
Reliable smart glasses have been around since the early 2010s. The most visible example, Google Glass,
wasn’t ideal consumer technology, but has quietly revolutionized manufacturing and related industries by
providing a solution for hands-on workers. Other devices such as Vuzix M300 and Realwear HMT-1 are
purpose-built for industrial settings, compliant with enterprise asset management protocols, and priced
comparably with handheld mobile devices. Binocular smart glasses such as Microsoft HoloLens and
Epson BT-350 can also deliver augmented reality experiences leveraging their comparatively larger screen
sizes.

General Electric Case Study

GE is a global leader in MRI machinery. In a GE Healthcare manufacturing facility in

Florence, SC, the Skylight industrial augmented reality platform is helping workers fulfill
MRI parts orders flawlessly and faster.

Workers use their smart glasses

to identify items, quantities, and
locations of orders within the
warehouse, then mark off orders
that have been fulfilled.

Workers completed tasks 46%

faster–a welcome productivity
improvement in a factory where
GE is investing $40 million.

upskill.io/ge Warehouse worker uses Skylight to determine where to

place a picked item into the cart for kitting

2 Uses data from existing enterprise sources

There are a couple of ways to deliver data to smart glasses, but we recommend going with a software
platform such as Skylight that seamlessly integrates with your current systems of record that govern your
business processes. Systems that govern your manufacturing operations (MES), material handling (WMS),
and service, inspection, and maintenance operations (FSM), as well as those providing plant and enterprise
level insights (ERP and PLM) already contain the information that your workforce is using every day. Skylight
gives you the ability to build applications that fit your workforce and your workplace scenarios without
replicating your data or having to manage a new set of technologies in your data center. Once deployed
within an enterprise environment, we’ve seen new use cases implemented in under a week using this
platform approach.

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 Boeing Case Study

When it comes to complex manufacturing,

building airplanes literally is rocket science.
Every aircraft model manufactured by
aerospace giant Boeing requires detailed and
specific wiring, with zero margin for error.

Boeing adopted Skylight enterprise software

with Google Glass hardware to provide
workers with voice-controlled access to
critical information without the need to look
away to consult a paper manual or laptop.

The results: a 25% savings in production time

with error rates reduced effectively to zero.

Boeing wiring technician views insertion locations in

upskill.io/boeing Skylight to complete process.

3 Supports mainstream work scenarios for industry

Think about the biggest challenges in your business: productivity, quality assurance, knowledge transfer. All
of them can be improved by AR today. Simplify complex, multi-step assembly tasks by keeping step-by-step
instructions in the worker’s line of sight. Help workers achieve unprecedented productivity and accuracy in
order picking. Cut down on the waste and inefficiency of paper-based processes and documentation with
two-way access to digital information. Boost quality and safety by giving front-line workers an easy way to
escalate questions to experts in the office, giving them a first-person point of view on the problem. The
everyday applications are vast, and deployment does not require extensive investment or training.

4 Measurable productivity benefits Our customers are

seeing an average of
The value of AR in the workplace isn’t just claimed; it’s proven with

32%
longitudinal data from real deployments. We’ve seen productivity
gains as much as 48%; reduction of error rates and improved first
time quality by as much as 30%; reduced training times and more. In
fact, across multiple companies and industries, the average
performance improvement realized using Skylight with smart glasses performance improvement
is 32%. With the typical cost structure in a manufacturing plant, using assisted reality via
implementing our AR solution for 1000 industrial workers translates
Skylight.
into $25 million dollars of return on investment annually.

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5 Production-ready solutions available now
AR has been hard at work in production settings at top industrial companies including The Boeing Company,
GE, Johnson and Johnson, DHL, Telstra and many others. If you’ve still got it on the test bench or in a small
production deployment, you are falling behind the leaders.

Towards the reconfigurable workforce

Beyond the immediate business drivers, analyst firms like Gartner are guiding companies investing in
Industry 4.0 technologies--robotics, IoT, sensors, predictive data analytics and smart, connected equipment--
toward AR solutions to connect the human workforce with all these new tools and data. Workers just need a
way to connect to the data and functionality they need without taking their hands off their tools or their eyes
off their work. AR delivered through an integrated, secure platform to today’s enterprise-ready smart-glasses
and devices, provides the solution.

As we move toward a more integrated vision of industry, with people and machines working side-by-side to
meet rising customer expectations and competitive needs, AR offers a way for human workers to keep
abreast of innovation and continue to contribute value to the process. As machines get smarter, people can
move at the same pace, developing new skills, pushing their knowledge out to the network, and tapping into
the collective experience of veteran workers, colleagues and experts.

It’s a vision that we call the Reconfigurable Workforce. That might sound like a grandiose idea, but it starts
with some simple investments that any enterprise can make today.

Mainstream vs. bleeding edge

We advise customers to think critically about the advantages of both types of AR in their businesses, and
critical loss of missing out. Our customers are seeing productivity, efficiency, quality and safety benefits
from smart glasses in a wide range of everyday work environments.

Companies deploying augmented reality today

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Skylight is the leading
augmented reality platform
for the industrial workforce.
Skylight helps hands-on
workers get jobs done
faster and more accurately
by connecting them to
people, information, and
equipment they need while
remaining hands-free to
focus on their tasks and
their tools.