Virtual Reality finally about to find its true purpose? – VR Industrial Training
Need versus want.
Virtual Reality content development and services are a tough pitch: many companies might WANT it, but rarely actually NEED it. Even though most clients show initial interest, a “want” service gets always pushed down the investment priority list and therefore hardly ever goes through. Identifying a “need” target market took a ton of brainstorming and research, but it wasn’t until we stumbled upon the following video, that we thought: this is it!
The power of Virtual Reality is that it can place you in virtually any scenario or place at an instance. From health and safety oil rig training to machine maintenance or even emergency scenarios such as fire or leakage. Most of those scenarios are either impossible or very costly to recreate in real life – which makes it a NEED. Training, ensuring safety at workplace and retaining the knowledge and expertise in the workforce is absolutely crucial to most firms.
Offshore oil companies struggle with high employee turnover during economic downturns. Experienced workers are let go and training budgets are reduced. Once the economy booms again, there’s an influx of young talent, creating a knowledge disparity between the junior and senior staff, as much of the on-site knowledge and experience has been lost.
Virtual Reality has the potential to reduce the learning gap by preserving expertise in a digital, interactive way.
Learning retention rates
According to the learning pyramid, human brain learns the fastest by practice. Apart from the on-site training, all the other forms of training hardly ever involve anything more than a presentation or/and a video.
A study done by Neal E Seymour “Virtual Reality Training Improves Operating Room Performance” compares the performance of surgeons without and without VR training.
No differences in baseline assessments were found between groups. Gallbladder dissection was 29% faster for VR-trained residents. Non-VR-trained residents were nine times more likely to transiently fail to make progress (P < .007, Mann-Whitney test) and five times more likely to injure the gallbladder or burn nontarget tissue (chi-square = 4.27, P < .04). Mean errors were six times less likely to occur in the VR-trained group (1.19 vs. 7.38 errors per case;P < .008, Mann-Whitney test).
Study shows, that while VR did not have much effect on the performance of baseline assessments (basic procedures), it did however significantly improve the score on more advanced situations such as Gallbladder dissection.
In the medical field, Virtual Reality lets you learn, practice and rehears and surgical procedure, where there isn’t any room for mistake.
Health and Safety (HSE)
In the construction, health and safety is an industry-wide problem. Taking Malaysia an example, a staggering 3500-4500 accidents happen every year, out of which 500-600 are permanent disabilities. Most of those are caused by poor working environment and inappropriate equipment use.
Having had spoken to a senior manager in the field, I’ve learned that there’s a compulsory HSE training program on-line for every member of staff to complete once a year. As the test doesn’t change throughout the years, hardly anyone takes it seriously, filling in the answers by heart.
The attention span on a standard HSE lecture is really short, most attendees get distracted by their phones only a few minutes into the class. A study done by an Australian University of Wollongong shows that Virtual Reality training had an average attention span of 90mins, compared to traditional training averaging at 30mins.
Virtual Reality also lets you perform and practice scenarios which cannot be re-created in real life. Emergency situations such as explosions, emergency aircraft landings, flooding, leakage require critical and instant thinking. Training behavior during such conditions can reduce the on-site casualties and injuries significantly
On-site training
Companies try to keep on-site training as brief and efficient as possible, as it often disrupts the workflow of the production, therefore costing the firm significant amounts of money. Operating larger machine takes extensive practice, while the companies can’t afford to shut the machine down even for a while.
Portability
The beauty of digitalized training is that you can quickly distribute the files throughout different branches. During a chat with an ex-IBM senior trainer, I’ve learn that IBM hires a team of corporate and technical trainers required to fly around the world, training company’s new solutions. Not only is that expensive, but the job itself has a high turnover rate, as the trainers get tired of constant travel.
The hardware is fairly portable too. It comes in a box that can easily be carried as carry-on luggage and the setup takes about 15 mins.
Trackable performance
One of the main advantages of using digital interactive training is the ability to monitor and track trainee’s performance. This data is crucial in refining the training program, identifying which elements trainees struggle with the most and lets you benchmark your branch performance with others.
Cost and Human Resources
Finally coming up to the one thing that catches every client’s attention: cost efficiency. My research has shown that, depending on the industry, the cost savings can vary from 20-50% - that's a lot! Some of the things that contribute to the cost reduction are: no costly dummy equipment, reduced downtimes, no replication of training from different branches, less human resources used.
It usually takes one person, experienced in the Virtual Reality setup and software troubleshooting, to be able to facilitate any kind of training.
What's next for VR Training?
Virtual Reality training is still a very fresh concept. While some of the early adopters such as McCarthy Construction, Bechtel, Walmart, Volkswagen, UPS praise the technology, it will still take significant amount of time before it becomes an industry standard solution. There’s a chance it never will.
I personally feel that nothing unlocks VR’s potential quite like training does. With the new, improved headsets coming out soon, VR Training has a better chance at becoming something that was once promised – a game changer
Coming up!
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nicely done!