Review of the leading business conference for Remote X and Augmented Reality Workflows

Picture of Written by <br> Daniel Mirbach

Written by
Daniel Mirbach

CORPORATE NEWS
10 min. reading time
January 28, 2022

More than 700 online participants attended the fourth edition of the AllAboutRemote (AAR) 2021 conference and experienced inspiring presentations on self-motivation to overcome personal boundaries, the future of work as well as valuable insights into remote support, augmented reality workflows and new business models in service and maintenance.

From hybrid to online

Rising vaccination rates, declining Corona infections accompanied by the positive development of the German government’s vaccination campaign initially all favored carrying out the AllAboutRemote as a hybrid event. But the virus once again showed that the newly won freedoms were not to last long and the belief in a piece of “old” normality once again receded into distance.

Canceling the most important event of the year, which annually brings together experts, innovators and practitioners from the mechanical and plant engineering as well as manufacturing industries worldwide, was not an option. The management of oculavis therefore decided promptly to conduct the AllAboutRemote as a pure online conference to protect all participants and involved parties. The event has been streamed live to the internet from the Digital Church in Aachen on December 14, 2021.

Increasing number of participants

AllAboutRemote once again proved its relevance across industries in the fields of networking, sharing and transferring knowledge on remote services, industrial augmented reality (AR) technology and innovative business models. The conference registrations increased from 500 to over 700 attendees, an increase of over 40 % compared to the previous year.

On the one hand, this was because top-class speakers reported on their experiences ranging from the implementation of digital collaboration forms, current and future use cases, the dispute with works councils, to new digital business models with smart services. Participants were thus able to benefit from valuable knowledge. On the other hand, the conference program offered advanced topics that promised variety, motivation and inspiration. For the first time, the Aachen-based scale-up oculavis presented its own award live to the winners of the ARxelerator program. The day’s program was completed by interactive workshops, 1-on-1 meetings and virtual demo spots, which had been made possible by the custom conference platform (see following figure).

The speakers in the morning

AllAboutRemote 2021 featured 10 speakers from industry, research and extreme sports. The day started with the three managing directors and founders of oculavis Dr. Markus Große Böckmann, Martin Plutz and Philipp Siebenkotten. In the opening keynote, Dr. Markus Große Böckmann looked back on the successful business year 2021, announced the opening of two new company offices in the US and in China, addressed the global climate change, the digitization and broadband internet expansion in Germany, spoke about new forms of work, and finally gave an outlook on the oculavis strategy for 2022.

The first speakers on stage were Jennifer Richardt, Product Manager Remote Service of thyssenkrupp Cement Technologies and Hakan Keser, Product Manager Digital Service Solutions of thyssenkrupp Mining Technologies. In their joint presentation entitled How to trick a pandemic: Close to industrial customers in times of Corona with fast implementation of new digital services, both impressively demonstrated how existing services were completely rebuilt in a diversified and globally operating industrial enterprise in a noticeably short time. Restructured and provided with a new technical setup, the operational processes of customers could be kept running optimally during the pandemic.

Dr. Johannes Finke, Head of Global Microbiology Management at Beiersdorf AG, then highlighted the application areas of Remote Assist for hygiene risk assessment at Beiersdorf AG. He provided insights into the work areas of microbiological management and the hygiene aspects of cosmetic and health products, named remote application areas, and shared his experiences about the benefits for Beiersdorf in terms of faster response times and cost optimization with the audience.

Usage of remote assist for hygiene risk assessment within Beiersdorf

Remote expert support in the health care and cosmetic industry? Of course!

Usage of remote assist for hygiene risk assessment within Beiersdorf

Remote expert support in the health care and cosmetic industry? Of course!

After a short coffee break, Dr. Philip Hartmann followed, who is Head of Digital Acceleration at SCHOTT AG. In his presentation entitled Remote assistance – from proof of concept to fully managed IT service, he spoke about the implementation of visual assist for production processes and machines at the international technology company specializing in the manufacture of glass and glass ceramics.

Eine industrielle Umgebung, in der geschmolzenes Glas gehandhabt oder verarbeitet wird.

Remote Assistance – from Proof of Concept to full managed IT service

Our aim – Poviding experts with a solution to directly assist the technicians in the plants at remote locations and solve problems immediately.

Remote Assistance – from Proof of Concept to full managed IT service

Our aim – Poviding experts with a solution to directly assist the technicians in the plants at remote locations and solve problems immediately.

The next speaker was Axel Minten, professor at FOM University, partner of cowork AG and specialist for New Work. To the question “Remote work – future of the modern workplace?” he provided answers with future working methods, working environments and their design. He made clear that the change towards remote work, mobile work and home office must go hand in hand with a change in mindset, leadership and self-organization.

The first part of the presentation program was concluded by Jonas Deichmann. Jonas is an extreme athlete, adventurer and motivational speaker. He completed the world’s longest triathlon, from Munich to Munich, which took him over a distance of 120 Ironmans (about 40,000 kilometers) – with a minimal carbon footprint! During the AllAboutRemote Jonas reported about the impressions of his world trip, about personal limits and how to overcome them.

Energized by the lunch break, Michael Krämer, Regional Director Germany at RealWear Inc. took the stage and presented the next generation of industrial assisted reality with the new RealWear Navigator™ 500 smart glasses.

Interactive workshops and virtual demo spots

Interactive workshops were offered, in which the latest developments of the oculavis SHARE platform were presented live and new use case scenarios were developed in exchange with the participants. In addition to the sessions, virtual demo spots were available to book 1-on-1 meetings or access videos-on-demand. The videos can be viewed exclusively via the following links:

Workflows for guided instructions and standard work [Watch video]
Visual Assistance for Remote X [Watch video]
Augmented Reality powered asset information [Watch video]

The presentation program in the afternoon

Matt Masters, Global Innovation Manager at SHV Energy, used the AllAboutRemote conference to share the achievements gained from digital workflows for remote inspections. His proof-of-concept results are based on more than 600 inspections performed on LPG tanks. The results show that non-specialist staff can be empowered to successfully perform standardized inspections without prior knowledge by providing step-by-step instructions with checklists, technical videos, images and feedback steps. In addition, operating costs were reduced by 40% during the pilot project compared to the conventional method and using skilled personnel.

Oliver Overbeck, Product Manager for Augmented Reality at Bayer AG, shared his experience of working with the works council, which was a key factor in the successful introduction of new digital technologies. Framework conditions were created to ensure the successful use of AR remote support and smart glasses within Germany at Bayer.

Eine Frau mit Schutzbrille und Handschuhen.

A cooperative approach to introduce digital collaboration forms with the Works Council

Cooperation with the workers council is the key in Germany when successfully introducing new digital technologies, to reach acceptance by employees.

A cooperative approach to introduce digital collaboration forms with the Works Council

Cooperation with the workers council is the key in Germany when successfully introducing new digital technologies, to reach acceptance by employees.

The presentation program was concluded by Pavel Hartl, Working Group Leader for Smart Maintenance at Robert Bosch LLC, who was remotely connected from USA and live on stage. In his presentation, he explained how the rollout of remote support and augmented reality succeeded at more than 50 Bosch locations worldwide, which key drivers were important for this and what the future will look like in this area and in the strategic cooperation with oculavis.

Key Learning from the ARxelerator Innovation Program and Award Ceremony

The ARxelerator was a six-month innovation program created and supported by oculavis. 10 corporates participated in the first edition in the period from May to December 2021. The accelerator program aimed to promote knowledge exchange within a consortium, provide mutual inspiration, learn from each other and take away new impulses. This co-creation approach, accompanied by a benchmarking study conducted by the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, provided a professional framework for successfully implementing and permanently establishing remote services and AR workflows in service organizations from a technical and organizational perspective. In addition, the participating companies were able to win prize packages worth EUR 150,000.

The winners were selected by a jury of experts consisting of Dr. Laura Dorfer, Project Manager VDMA Startup Machine, Dr. Ina Heine, Head of Organizational Development at WZL and Eleonor Thompson, Head of Business Relations at RWTH Innovation GmbH. The award ceremony took place during the AllAboutRemote. We would like to take this opportunity to once again congratulate the winners Hüller Hille GmbH (1st place), GEBHARDT Intralogistics Group (2nd place) and Clean-Lasersysteme GmbH (3rd place).

The ARxelerator Innovation Program will be offered again this year. Information will follow shortly and will be available at oculavis.de/x.

Remote collaborations are paving the way for more resilient processes

Digital transformation, driven by New Work principles and radically accelerated by COVID-19, is advancing. Climate protection and sustainable business are gaining in importance. Business travel is becoming more complicated, and employees now expect to be able to work from anywhere.

Digital, professional and industrially oriented collaboration forms are more important than ever. Software solutions such as oculavis SHARE help to remain capable of action and to keep operative service or shopfloor processes running. oculavis SHARE can be used successfully wherever technical knowledge needs to be shared systematically. Commissioning, maintenance, repair and troubleshooting are typical applications today. In addition to these areas of application as smart service solutions for mechanical and plant engineering, the solution is also used for cross-locational knowledge exchange in manufacturing companies to integrate people into smart factory concepts with the help of augmented reality.

The industry presentations showed that the remote age has already begun and that collaboration between knowledge carriers, service technicians and machine operators can take place digitally. Digital business models for machine and plant manufacturers, customer loyalty, innovative customer experience, faster response times, higher machine availability and the reduction of CO2 emissions are measurable added values.

But the potential is still large. Access to data, regardless of the complexity of the use case or the information needs of the technician, will be easier and more integrated in the future. All information on machinery and equipment, such as workflows, AR scenarios, remote service call, asset information systems, spare parts and documentation in cases are no longer isolated, but united in the augmented reality platform oculavis SHARE. The multi-user calls for up to 20 participants with higher video and audio quality, single sign-on (SSO), SMS invitation, Outlook connector as well as CRM and ERP integration are current developments that further leverage the power of oculavis SHARE and pave the way for more resilient processes.

Registration for AllAboutRemote 2022 are open

oculavis announces December 8, 2022 as the date for the fifth edition of the conference. Registration is already open at www.AllAboutRemote.com. We are looking forward to meet you there! Or feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Written by Daniel Mirbach

Send email

FURTHER ARTICLES FROM THIS CATEGORY

oculavis projects that optimise maintenance processes are honoured with the DigiRess II award.

The future of maintenance: oculavis sets new standards in machine maintenance and optimizes workflows with generative AI

11/12/2024

As part of the DigiRess II funding program, several groundbreaking projects focused on climate protection