Case studies
What the giantsactually measured
Organisations with concrete results from virtual and augmented reality. Every figure is tied to the company’s own release, the vendor’s publication or a peer-reviewed study — and anything we could not tie down is not here.
Most percentages circulating in industrial VR writing come from lists copying one another, and the trail never reaches a source. For every number here we went to the company’s own release, the technology provider’s publication, or a peer-reviewed study. A number that did not appear in the source text did not make the page — even where the rest of the case checked out.
One case from the same collection (VR safety training in mining) was dropped entirely: the claimed percentages could not be tied to any primary source. Some figures were removed from the eleven published cases for the same reason, and each page states which claim was dropped and why.
Company cases
- Boeing
Boeing moved wire harness assembly into the glasses
Taking the instruction off paper and into the technician's field of view produced a quarter improvement in production time on a wire harness assembly pilot.
25% improvement in production time - Ford Motor Company
Ford tries the assembly line virtually before building it
Hundreds of virtual assembly assessments before every vehicle launch have cut the production line injury rate by seventy percent since 2003.
70% reduction in work injuries since 2003 - Walmart
Walmart turned eight hours of training into fifteen minutes
Moving the training for a new order pickup unit into virtual reality cut the time to a sixteenth — and the test scores went up, not down.
96% reduction in training time - DHL
DHL sped up warehouse picking by freeing both hands
Moving the pick list from a handheld terminal into the worker's field of view produced a quarter gain in picking efficiency.
25% efficiency gain in the picking process - GE Aviation
GE Aviation connected the torque wrench to the glasses
On jet engine assembly, smart glasses and a Wi-Fi torque wrench worked together, verifying the tightening value in real time.
8–12% average gain in mechanic efficiency - BMW Group
BMW let one trainer handle three people at once
In AR-based production training the learning success was as high as in one-on-one sessions, and one trainer could supervise three trainees instead of one.
1 → 3 trainees per trainer, simultaneously - UPS
UPS makes trainee drivers call the hazard out loud
Road hazard recognition moved from touchscreens into virtual reality, where the trainee has to name every risk they see aloud.
9 training centres running the modules - Sprouts Farmers Market
Sprouts fitted onboarding into a quarter of the time
Four hours of new-hire training became forty-five minutes, and recall of the company values went up sixteenfold.
81% reduction in onboarding time - Caterpillar
Caterpillar built live AR support for its dealer network
An augmented reality video support platform so that dealer technicians and central experts can look at the same machine while solving a fault.
CAT LIVESHARE AR-based live remote support for the dealer network - Airbus
Airbus does verification in a quarter of the time
Validating maintenance and assembly operations virtually takes a quarter of the time the traditional CAD-based method needs.
25% of the time the traditional method takes - Lockheed Martin
F-35 trainees fly half of their first flights in the simulator
Around half of initial training flights happen in the full mission simulator, and more than a thousand pilots have trained that way.
45–55% of initial training flights flown in the simulator
Let's start withone machine
We pick the pilot scenario together, make it run, and measure it. The results decide what comes next.