Last year, I visited the bottling plants of a leading soft-drink company. As I walked around the massive floor with sounds echoing from all directions, I was left with an impression of a well-orchestrated industry working on a grand scale. After spending more time with the team I learned one of the biggest challenges they face is downtime caused by problems with the unique machines and pieces of equipment. These parts come from many different places and manufacturers from all over the global, and require unique expertise. What if, instead of flying in a representative from the manufacturer, the company used Assisted Reality to help their own workers to fix the problems on-site?

These are the kinds of challenges the Glass team is working to solve, so companies struggle less to get specialized knowledge from centralized repositories out into the field. Bringing Assisted Reality to wearable technology in general, including smart glasses like Glass, means the technology is able to understand a user’s specific needs and layer in relevant information. Then, workers can apply this insight — whether aided by a particular tool, a diagram, or a procedure — to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work.

In the case of the soft-drink company, we helped the director of operations see the potential of Assisted Reality to improve uptime by providing remote assistance via hands-free video chat between the bottling-machine specialist in Germany and an on-site worker to quickly assess, triage, and fix the issue. Assisted Reality empowers “hands-on” employees to see the results of improved quality, increased accuracy, and faster time to completion. These benefits are becoming a reality across industries.

Getting the job done faster and more affordably

For workers and professionals in fields such as manufacturing, logistics, field services, and healthcare where there is often a need to reference lots of content that they might otherwise forget, Assisted Reality is providing very real and appreciable returns on investment.

• Mechanics at GE Aviation who are responsible for the complex assembly and repair of airplane engines are now using Assisted Reality through Glass to view instructions with videos, animations, and images right in their line of sight so they don’t have to stop work to check their binders or computer to know what to do next. Since they started using Glass, GE Aviation estimates they have not only reduced errors at key points in the assembly and overhaul of engines, but also they have improved their mechanics’ efficiency by between 8–12 percent.
• Employees at AGCO, an agriculture machinery manufacturing company, are using Assisted Reality to reduce the amount of time spent transitioning in and out of their workflow to access checklists, view instruction manuals, and send photos from tablets or laptops while they’re assembling machinery. Using Assisted Reality with Glass, AGCO has reduced their machinery production time by 25 percent and inspection times by 30 percent.

• In healthcare, the quality of care is important to providers and patients alike, and physicians with Dignity Health have been using Glass during patient consultations to provide a better experience. Thanks to Assisted Reality, they’re able to use software that accurately transcribes their spoken notes. Ultimately, they’ve reduced the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, including transcribing and typing up patient notes, from 33 percent of the day to less than 10 percent. This change has enabled them to double the amount of time they interact with patients.

As an industry, makers of wearable technology are just starting to scratch the surface — pun a little bit intended — with Assisted Reality. As the Glass team continues to build solutions for hands-on workers across industries, we’re listening to them and working with software partners to further advance the potential of these devices in the enterprise. From agriculture to health care to manufacturing and beyond, there are countless possibilities for how Glass can help people work better, smarter, faster, and safer.

How Assisted Reality is transforming hands-on work was originally published in X, the moonshot factory on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since the launch of Glass Enterprise Edition last summer, we’ve introduced Glass to many new companies, and helped existing customers scale their deployments across critical workflows. It’s been rewarding to help our customers realize their decades-long vision of using wearable technology to improve the quality of their products and help their employees work faster and smarter.

Many of us in the wearables industry, including hardware manufacturers, software developers, and enterprises using wearables, are gathered in Austin this week for the annual Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit to share our experiences with each other as we continue to push this field forward. In my keynote speech, I shared trends the Glass team has observed alongside our partners and customers.

Managing the unexpected is key to scaling deployments

When a large organization is rolling out a new technology into decades of ingrained habits and clearly defined processes, there are no shortcuts. Technology providers and the organization’s executives need to get into the trenches to understand the organization’s needs — from the front-line workers wearing the device to the IT and HR departments who play critical roles in their deployment. Everyone needs to be prepared to support the challenges that inevitably arise as a deployment grows from tens to thousands of devices, and from episodic to all-day use.

Each organization is unique; it takes a strong partnership between the technology providers and company stakeholders to get a project over the line. One of our customers had different IT policies for workers doing the same job in different countries, and so it took a lot of time (and patience) on the part of the IT department to deploy Glass across their global manufacturing plants. Together, we were able to find a creative solution that allowed the customer to deploy Glass within their policy constraints.

Multiple wearables might be the solution

As wearable devices come into their own in work environments, we’re identifying the benefits and limitations of their use in newer applications, and learning about how to best integrate them with other commonly used tools. In efforts to simplify their IT ecosystems, we often see CIOs attempt to leverage a single wearable as a “one size fits all” solution across multiple use-cases throughout their company. This limits the potential benefit that wearables can bring. It’s important to recognize that different workers and tasks may best be supported by a variety of wearable devices, often working in concert with each other.

For example, we’ve seen logistics companies use Glass as a heads-up display in tandem with ring scanners and scan guns to improve workers’ speed and accuracy. In these cases, Glass can direct the worker to the right location in the warehouse to find packages while the small form factor of the ring scanner enables workers to quickly and comfortably scan dozens of boxes with small barcodes. It’s all about truly understanding your employees’ needs on the job and then building the right solution from there.

Wearable technologies are helping preserve company knowledge and improve best practices

Wearables are becoming useful tools for creating educational content within an organization. Several of our customers are using the video recording feature of Glass to document best practices across different tasks; a worker wearing Glass can narrate and demonstrate, step-by-step, how to assemble an engine, or repair some machinery. These recordings can be turned into training assets that can reduce the time and cost of on-boarding a new employee and minimize the loss of expertise when experienced workers leave the company.

We’ve also seen companies identify opportunities for process improvements. An auto manufacturer uses Glass to help maintain quality standards on a paint and assembly line. The existing best practice was for workers to paint the panels of the car and then attach them to the car frame. One worker, however, took a shortcut: painting the inside of each panel, attaching it to the car frame, and then painting all the outsides of the panels at once. At first glance, this looked like a process violation, but the painter had determined that his way was faster, and any smudges introduced in the process were irrelevant, because they were inside the wheel wells and engine compartment. Glass made it possible for the company to discover and share a quicker and more cost-effective process, which ultimately became a new best practice for all employees.

Looking ahead to 2019

Beyond the trends noted here, the most important message I have for the wearable industry is in line with our Google heritage: focus on the user and all else will follow. We’re continuing to improve Glass based on feedback from our software partners and customers, and we’re looking forward to helping many more businesses work faster, smarter and more safely.

If you’d like to find out more about the updates and improvements we’re making to Glass, please get in touch or find us at EWTS in Austin this week.

Three trends to watch in enterprise wearables was originally published in X, the moonshot factory on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back in 2014, my team was at GE Aviation in Cincinnati, Ohio, watching how mechanics assemble and repair airplane engines. Airplane maintenance is a complex and specialized task, and any errors can lead to expensive delays or having to conduct the entire maintenance process all over again. The mechanics moved carefully, putting down tools and climbing up and down ladders to consult paper instructions in between steps.

Fast forward to today, and GE’s mechanics now use Glass running software from our partner Upskill, which shows them instructions with videos, animations and images right in their line of sight so they don’t have to stop work to check their binders or computer to know what to do next. Since using Glass with Upskill, they estimate that they have not only reduced errors at key points in the assembly and overhaul of engines, but that they have improved their mechanics’ efficiency by between 8–12%.

On the left is an assembly engine manual that GE’s mechanics used to consult. Now they use Glass Enterprise Edition on the right.

GE was one of the first businesses to experience the benefits of Glass in the workplace. Now, there are more than 50 businesses, including AGCO, DHL, Dignity Health, NSF International, Sutter Health,The Boeing Company, and Volkswagen, who have been using Glass to complete their work faster and more easily than before. Based on the positive feedback we’ve received from these customers in a special program we’ve been running for the past two years, we’re now making Glass Enterprise Edition available to more businesses through our network of partners.

Customizing Glass for workers

Glass, as you might remember, is a very small, lightweight wearable computer with a transparent display that brings information into your line of sight. In a work setting, you can clip it onto glasses or industry frames like safety goggles so you don’t have to switch focus between what you’re doing with your hands and the content you need to see to do your job.

Workers in many fields, like manufacturing, logistics, field services, and healthcare find it useful to consult a wearable device for information and other resources while their hands are busy. That’s why we’ve spent the last two years working closely with a network of more than 30 expert partners to build customized software and business solutions for Glass for people in these fields. We’ve also made improvements to the design and hardware so that it’s lightweight and comfortable for long term wear. We’ve increased the power and battery life too.

Workers at AGCO, an agricultural machinery manufacturer in Jackson, Minnesota, are using Glass Enterprise Edition. By reducing the amount of back and forth workers have to do accessing checklists, viewing instruction manuals or sending photos from tablets or laptops as they assemble machines, Glass has reduced machinery production time by 25 percent and inspection times by 30 percent. As Peggy Gulick, Director of Business Process Improvement, explains, “Employees are now working smarter, faster and safer because they have the information they need right in their line of sight.”

“Employees are now working smarter, faster and safer because they have the information they need right in their line of sight.” Peggy Gulick, Director of Business Process Improvement, AGCO

DHL is seeing similar results. DHL’s employees have a supply chain process called “order picking” where they fulfill orders by scanning items from racks before moving them into totes or bins on carts to be shipped. Using a solution from Ubimax with Glass , they now receive real-time instructions about where items have to be placed on the carts with the help of visual aids. With their hands now free of paper instructions, pickers can work far more efficiently and comfortably, and DHL estimates that they have increased supply chain efficiency by 15%.

Glass is also helping healthcare professionals. Doctors at Dignity Health have been using Glass with an application our partner Augmedix calls “a remote scribe”. Now, instead of typing on a computer during consultations, they can connect with patients by looking them in the eye, listening as they talk, and asking questions — all with confidence that all the note taking work is being done in the background. Dignity’s Chief Medical Information Officer, Dr. Davin Lundquist says that in addition to improving their quality of care, Glass has also reduced the time they spend typing up patient notes and other administrative work from 33 percent of their day to less than 10 percent, while doubling the amount of time they interact with patients.

Dr. Albert Chan at Sutter Health shares a similar story. Using Glass with Augmedix, doctors at Sutter Health estimate that they have reduced the amount of time they spend on electronic health record keeping by around two hours a day. He also says Glass has “brought the joys of medicine back to my doctors” because it lets them focus on patients instead of technology.

Glass has “brought the joys of medicine back to my doctors.” Dr. Albert Chan, Sutter Health

We first saw signs of Glass’ potential for businesses in the Glass Explorer days. As we said when we graduated, we’d been seeing incredible developments with Glass in the workplace. Now the Glass product team is back at X, and we’ll be collaborating with the Google Cloud team and our partners to help customers across a variety of business sectors make the most of Glass. Together, we’re looking forward to seeing more businesses give their workers a way to work faster and in a more focused way, hands-free.

A new chapter for Glass was originally published in X, the moonshot factory on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.