Augmented and Virtual Reality is the process of creating a virtual copy of the real world which we can interact with using various wearable gadgets. The current technology supports VR and AR through wearable glasses, projectors, and some other gadgets. The advancements in these gadgets are on the way and some theories even say that in the future, the virtual world is going to be where most of the human interactions will take place. Being exciting and scary at the same time, augmented and virtual reality have a lot of uses and benefits they can prove to various processes. One of the most favorable places for the usage of augmented reality is the maintenance and repair department. We were able to find out that most of the errors and problems encountered during the maintenance and repair in a warehouse are mostly due to human error. Since augmented reality is the virtual copy of the real world and humans can interact and make changes to everything virtual just how they can in real life, the process of maintenance can become more efficient if people were trained to do it first in the virtual world with the real-life situations. The whole process of maintenance and repair can become fast and much more efficient with the use of virtual reality since it will help people learn more about various issues they can face through the simulations.

AR/VR in maintenance

We found out that most of the problems faced by any maintenance officer on the field are related to less knowledge about a package and thus not being able to properly handle it. With the use of virtual reality, every package can be added to the virtual simulation which can be then shared with the contact center of the package and thus learn all there is about how to manage the package and ensure optimum delivery speed. The maintenance of machinery and systems in a company is one of the most important parts of the whole production process. It can be seen that the maintenance process takes a lot of time and effort when done manually. With the use of augmented and virtual reality, this process can become faster and very easy to manage. Every machinery and system can have its virtual replica stored on the system for optimum functioning, whenever the system detects any error or damage, the concerned authority will get notified and the maintenance tasks can be performed. With the use of virtually stored information, a lot of time and effort can be saved that would be put by on-field technicians into learning about the damage and then assessing the maintenance process.

Repair process using AR/VR

Even the repairing process takes a lot of time if the on-field repair team has to manage the whole operation by learning about the type of damage and them getting on to the repair process. Since virtual reality-based systems can check every machinery and system for all kinds of damages by comparing it to the optimum functioning virtual replica, it can also suggest the best ways to repair the damage. With all the information related to various repair methods and the machine learning of the system itself, the whole process of repair can be sped up which will thus result in better efficiency in the repair too. The whole theme of virtual reality and machine learning is thus a great way to make sure that the process of repair gets fast-tracked. Machine breakdown can be a heavy costing issue for a company and with system checks in place using virtual reality, even the breakdowns can be repaired before they even happen and this is a great benefit that the whole usage of augmented reality and virtual reality provides.

Benefits of using augmented and virtual reality

The maintenance and repair process is one of the costliest processes for any industry. Every company wants to make sure that the process of production and supply works flawlessly and for this, the process of maintenance and repair needs to be efficient. Virtual reality mixed with machine learning has enabled many benefits to the industries related to the whole maintenance and repair process. Some of the benefits of using augmented reality and virtual reality are:

1.       Virtual projections of a system or machinery can be shared with experts who would then assess the on-field technicians to do proper maintenance and repair.

2.       The repair process can be sped up as the experts will be able to virtually assess the technicians on the field to provide the required instructions.

3.       The virtual world offers various chances to do the same thing in multiple ways. Technicians can learn various processes of maintenance and repair on the same machinery by reusing virtual replicas.

Summary

Virtual reality and augmented reality have become some of the most talked-about topics all around the world. Since these are the technologies that are going to shape the future, there are multiple places that these are being implemented. The maintenance and repair departments of various industries are actively implementing virtual reality systems to speed up these processes. One of the most important things to consider about VR and AR, today, is that the whole setup of these systems costs a lot, and thus such a large investment requires proper assessing of the requirement. To summarize this whole thing, we can say that augmented reality and virtual reality are the requirements that can optimize the whole maintenance and repair process. But the only thing that a company needs to keep in mind before setting it up is if they know how to use this thing and also if they can afford it today. This technology is currently new and may have a lot of bugs and errors as well, thus if a company has large operations and most of them are dependent on the maintenance of the productions, then it is safe to implement virtual reality technology on the maintenance and repair. For the smaller production units, it is best to continue with the manual works until the augmented reality setup costs lesser than it does now.