BUSINESS INSIGHTS
How has digitalisation impacted this sector ?
Digitalisation is one of the answers to these challenges . First , digitalisation helps to make things transparent . And once you tap into wearables , you are able to get even more insights . Right now , the enterprise software allows you to track ‘ how fast you are .’. Now you suddenly have technology that travels with the worker and is able to provide sparring and transparency on ‘ how the work is being performed ’.
Digitalisation also helps people who have been unable to travel to certain locations in the logistics space to spin up additional sites and facilities using video collaboration , for example , and providing the expert knowledge on-site , making processes more effective and quicker to set up .
At the same time , using vision picking , data is conveyed much more intuitively . It ' s not that digitalisation has never been there , but some of the products have historically been quite bulky and the displays are not very intuitive to read . By using AR technology and wearables , you can speed up these processes and make it more intuitive for people to do that . This way we can replicate the same positive digital experiences we have in our private lives and bring it to the industrial space . That is very powerful .
Tell us more about why wearables and Augmented Reality are being more commonly used ?
The pandemic has been an incubator for increased usage . It ' s not like they have not been used before but it ' s something that was previously more of a nice to have which has become an absolute necessity for companies . Big enterprises – like DHL and Coca-Cola HBC – have really standardised now on the technology on the logistics side .
What are the benefits for frontline workers when it comes to Augmented Reality ?
The typical benefits we see are that it gives you a faster top-line speed because you can get more done with the same workforce . We see a speed increase of around 15 % if you already have very optimised processes but this can be as high as 50 %+ if your processes are less optimised .
Another benefit is faster ramp-up – you can now take a temp off the street and get them productively active in the logistics processes in 30 minutes to an hour . That ' s essential in industries where you have a lot of temporary workers that really need to be onboarded continuously because your workforce may change regularly .
And then the third thing is you also can expect higher quality . One of the companies that was very strong on the quality side was Coca-Cola HBC . They wanted to get 99.99 % accuracy and needed a solution to do so . Our vision picking solution was the answer for them .
In addition , it also allows companies to better compete for scarce labour . People want to work with technology they feel is state of the art . Smart glasses allow very easy access to the information you need . Having everything directly in your field of view makes it very intuitive . It ' s not abstract .
What are the most important criteria for assessing a platform ?
The most important thing is flexibility . You want to select a platform that has a lot of breadth , rather than a point solution that is limited to only doing one thing . It ’ s important to pick a platform that allows you to start with picking , for example , because that ' s where the large majority of a workforce resides , but then expand it to other www . intelligentcxo . com
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