What usually stops hands-on training from scaling is the number of trainers. If a complex assembly job has to be shown one to one, the trainer can only attend to one person at a time; the queue grows and the training plan slips.
What they did
BMW Group brought virtual and augmented reality applications into its production system. In AR-supported training, trainees follow the steps through the glasses after a short briefing, and the trainer supervises the group instead of demonstrating individually. The same system plans new workstations virtually, and training content can be authored without writing code.
The measured result
- Learning success with AR training as high as in one-on-one sessions
- One trainer can supervise three trainees at once instead of one
- New workstations are planned quickly from digitised 3D factory data
- Training courses can be designed without any coding knowledge using BMW’s own authoring tool
What it means for a manufacturer
This case does not say VR replaces the trainer; it says the opposite. The trainer stays, but their capacity triples without quality dropping. Wherever trainer availability is the bottleneck — including manufacturers training a dealer network — this is the route to scale.