March 3, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode, the AREA's Mark Sage chats with Ashley Stowe, Director of the Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Center, a uranium enrichment manufacturing facility that provides AR training for first responders dealing with emergencies featuring nuclear and other highly hazardous materials. They discuss:
- Effective immersive training for dangerous environments - Challenges of moving from AR demo to deployment - Difficulties building manageable enterprise AR solutions - Advice for organizations looking into enterprise AR
Please visit thearea.org. Meet the Oak Ridge AR and AREA teams at the 3rd Annual ORETTC XR Symposium, April 22-23 in Oak Ridge, TN. Visit our website for complete information on this event.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome. I'm Karen Quatromoni,
Director of Public Relations forObject Management Group, OMG.
Welcome to our OMG podcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focused on the AugmentedReality for Enterprise Alliance or AREA.
It is the only global nonprofitmember-based organization that is dedicated to
(00:32):
the adoption of interoperableAR enabled enterprise systems.
The area's executive director MarkSage will lead today's podcast session.
Mark.
Thank you Karen, and welcomeeverybody to our latest podcast.
And I feel like I'd always saythis at the start of the podcast,
(00:53):
but it's really great to haveanother industry expert with us today
who has done a lot inthe AR space over Wow.
And Ashley will introduce himself,
but I certainly know Ashleyprobably for at least five years,
and it's been really interesting followinghis kind of story and what he's been
able to drive. So we're going tofind out a little bit more today.
(01:15):
But rather than me talking, Ashley,
can I ask you to introduce yourself anda little bit about the company you work
for?
Yeah, Mark, thanks for having me on.
I will say I cut my teethwith the AREA as I came up to
speed on augmented realityin this whole space,
so thanks for having me on. Soyeah, my name's Ashley Stowe.
(01:38):
I'm the director of the Oak RidgeEnhanced Technology and Training Center,
we call it, or for short,
we're part of the Y-12National Security Complex,
which is a department of energy nuclearproduction facility in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. That dates backto the Manhattan Project.
(01:58):
Our facility was created todo uranium enrichment and the
uranium manufacturing that helped to builda nuclear weapon that ended World War
II, or at least helped toend World War II And since
1945, we've continued thatsame mission up to today.
But one thing that came with this heritageof understanding nuclear production
(02:22):
is our ability to understand what it takes
to keep the rest of theworld safe from a global
security standpoint.And so our facility or
has the mission of helpingto train first responders
(02:42):
and other types of individualsthat need to understand
nuclear and radiological hazards.
If bad guys try to do badthings in their neighborhood,
oftentimes we will train highconsequence emergency response events
where let's say a nuclear therapy
(03:02):
device which has radioactivematerial in it is
taken out stolen.
The first responders will be thefirst ones to appear on the scene.
And so we need them to understand theseunique hazards so that they can do the
job they're well trainedto do without causing harm
(03:22):
to themselves or to others around themuntil the specialist groups that the
US government has setup are able to arrive.
Yeah, thanks Ashley.
It's a really important job and thankyou for all the kind of work and
training that you've done there.
Maybe focusing a little bit more onthe AR side now that's helping you.
(03:45):
Can you first tell us a littlebit of why you joined the AREA
and what you were kind ofhoping to achieve by joining?
Yeah, so I mentioned we dohigh consequence events,
a high consequence trainingwith high hazard materials.
And so there's really two reasonswe joined the AREA. Number one,
(04:08):
we want to provide a
immersive trainingexperiences that are effective
and really useful in helpingto transfer that understanding
so they're effective in learningwithout putting the hazard
in front of the trainee earlyin their training process.
(04:31):
And so beginning to goto a place like the AREA
that is an industryleader in best practices,
figuring out return on investment,
figuring out the best approacheswithin augmented reality to effectively
deliver content and achieveour training mission was the
(04:52):
primary reason that we beganand we joined the AREA.
But all of this also coincidedwith Covid. Historically,
our training has been,
and when Covid happened, noneof us could get together.
And so we had to figure outanother means to get together
(05:13):
to train our folks who were scatteredall across the world. And what
we started with was Zoommeetings in a conference room,
which is a pretty rough way to go.
And so we reached out to theAREA to begin to understand how
does augmented reality work,how do we design the interfaces,
(05:34):
the training so that we canstill do what we know how to
do in a way that allows us to engage at a
distance in an immersiveway, in an effective way.
So that's why we joined the area.
And over the last five years thatyou and I have gotten to know each
other,
(05:55):
we've continued to push that envelopewith the guidance of you specifically Mark
as the executive director, aswell as the area as a whole,
as we've learned from all thepeer network that's been created.
Yeah, thank Ashley for those kind words.
You've talked a little bit aboutyour company's mission and vision,
(06:17):
things like that. Is there anythingelse you'd like to add to that,
maybe how that's changed afterCovid and do you still have the
same thinking and principles interms of that training that's needed?
So y twelves got three main missions,
the nuclear deterrence, so maintainingthe nuclear weapons production,
(06:42):
that is one of our primary missions. Wealso have a mission in global security,
so keeping America andthe rest of the world safe
by having experts who understandwhat it takes, what to look for,
and we go out and
when we need to bring materials hometo help keep the world safe from a
(07:05):
global security standpoint.
And then we also fuel the nuclear navy.
So we have those three main missions and
or our specific mission andvision is training for those
high consequence
radiological or nuclear eventswithin that global security mission.
(07:27):
And what I would say is as we tryto achieve our mission, or sorry,
our vision of being the preeminenttraining campus for radiation
response or nuclear processing throughthe use of immersive technology,
we really fall into two lines oftraining this high consequence
(07:47):
radiation response trainingthat I've mentioned where again,
we use and leverage thetechnology to provide
realistic immersive training withoutputting the hazard in front of the
individual. But then we'vealso kind of grown into this
nuclear processing business line because
(08:11):
what we found is the samekind of technology enables
learning on the nuclear processing side.
So this is basically manufacturing,
but with our unique materials.
And as the world goesto digital engineering,
as engineering companiesput all of their 3D models,
(08:33):
their CAD models into3D engineering models
that have building informationsystems built into them,
we can leverage the same typeof technology to bring augmented
reality into the factory floor.
So whether that is takingthe engineering models and
(08:54):
optimizing design by beingable to visualize it in three
dimensions,
or even bringing groups together to lookat the same three dimensional objects
spatially viewed through acollaborative extended reality
kind of framework,
or it's training people to use piecesof equipment before that equipment is
(09:16):
even fabricated.
We have found that the engineering world
is setting up a foundation that we canreach into and leverage from an augmented
reality standpoint to make our engineers,
our manufacturing staff andour management staff all
operate more optimallyand make better decisions.
(09:40):
Yeah, thank you, Ashley.
There's obviously lots of different usecases and work you're doing in that kind
of quite wide scope of activities,so that's really great to hear.
And maybe jumping onto the next question,
with that kind of scope of activities,
can you talk a little bit about some ofthe challenges that you've been facing
(10:00):
in deploying enterprise ar?
Well, Mark,
you and I have talked a number of timesabout the challenges of moving from demo
to deployment,
sort of this pilot purgatory I think isthe word that you typically use or the
phrase you typically use.But one of the challenges,
(10:20):
there are so many use casesand there are so many,
the landscape of technology is changingso quickly right now on the headset
side as well as the softwareside that it's hard to
build an enterprisestructure that is manageable.
(10:42):
So oftentimes you'll havefunding for individual projects,
but these individual projectsmay choose a certain headset
or a software set that will
work for the one will
work for that specific application,
(11:04):
but it may not be optimalfor another use case.
And so we're spending a lot of time,
I'm spending a lot of time trying towork with our engineering staff and our
management staff to say,
let's stop working on fundingfor individual projects,
bespoke solutions,
and start thinking about building afoundational structure that links this
(11:27):
digital layer of engineeringto a visualization
layer that leverages digital twins and
iot connectivity so thatwe have visualization
tools and augmented reality orvirtual reality or haptics that we
can actually use across the whole site,
(11:50):
across the whole factory, if you will,
for design, for optimizing manufacturing,
for helping the workers learnand for emergency response
planning.
Yeah,
it's a really interesting and importantpart what you're doing actually moving
from that kind of veryprojects focused approach to a
(12:14):
kind of platform,
almost an internal ecosystemso people can reuse the
components, reuse theprocesses, and like you said,
reuse the hardware and software as well.
So I think in my experience,
as companies begin to evolveand become mature in this space,
they're definitely in that second part,
which is they've created thatkind of set of tools, ecosystem,
(12:38):
even kind of the security parts aroundit so people can then start to really
focus on the use cases thatthey're solving rather than all the other bits that
come with it. So it's reallygreat to hear you on that journey.
Well, yeah, and Mark, ifI can give one example.
So we did a projectrecently where we took a new
(12:58):
manufacturing building,lots of square footage,
lots of complex spaces and rooms,
really expensive complex equipment, and
the initial project wasa few million dollars,
(13:19):
took us a good bit of time,
and then we built atrainer trainer off of it.
Now the real piece of equipment,
the physical piece of equipment is tens of
millions of dollars. We're not goingto build spares to do training,
but because we built that investment,
(13:39):
even though it was a few milliondollars to build out that foundational
investment,
we now have a realistic sim trainer for
procedural operations on apiece of equipment that I can
scale by putting it into aheadset at three to $5,000.
(14:00):
And so if I have many people to train,
I can scale cheaply or at least
economically after that initialinvestment to be able to train
more people at the same time or quicker.
The other thing that we're beginningto understand is the next piece of
equipment that we try to build withinthat large complex of manufacturing
(14:25):
is a much lower unit pricebecause we already have the
foundational pieces of thebuilding and the structure.
Helping our management team andhelping our engineering team
understand the value of theseinitial investments and how
(14:46):
that scales from a returnon investment or a unit
cost to build out other pieces has been
a challenge. But I think in some wayswe're able to start showing it and putting
our augmented reality toolswhere our mouth was to show
(15:06):
the benefit of how we can use it and why
those initial investments were valuable.
So it still remains to be seen if wehave buy-in the freedom to build out the
rest of the pieces of equipment,
but we're starting to seethe changing thought process
and begin to come forth.
(15:29):
Yeah, that's reallyinteresting. Thank you.
Maybe just asking to extend that question,
what other insights have you gained
over the years and how do you see thoseinsights driving enterprise AR adoption?
Is there anything else you can talk about?
Augmented reality? You and I talkabout augmented reality quite a bit,
(15:52):
but the landscape is changing becausethe manufacturing is changing.
Some of our primary headsetmanufacturers have exited the space,
new ones are coming in pass through,
virtual reality is coming in.
And so for the folks likeyou or like me within
companies,
(16:14):
while we are advocating forthe use of augmented reality,
I do think it's important thatwe're honest about how we use
augmented reality.
When we use augmented realityand where we have actually
built the most
trust is when we'll have a customer say,
(16:37):
can you build me anaugmented reality solution?
And we start asking the questions aboutwhat is it you're actually trying to do
to then ultimately in some cases say,
we don't think augmented realityis the best solution for you.
And so saying no when it's appropriateactually gives us more trust
(16:58):
and has customers come back tous more often in cases where we
can say yes.
And so being honest aboutwhat augmented reality can
do, how you can buildaugmented reality solutions,
I think is really importantat scaling this from
really flashy contentdemos that management
(17:23):
can get behind early on tosomething that is truly scalable
and will last as anevolution of a way of doing
business.
Yeah, thank you, Ashley. I thinkyou, you're absolutely right.
I think also being able to help
(17:43):
everybody within your organization goon a journey is a case quite often.
And they use the term plan big,but actually deliver small.
You don't want to getinto pilot purgatory,
but you want to make sure that youunderstand or parts of the organization
understand and come along from thesecurity teams, from the IT teams,
(18:04):
from the safety managers and all kind ofother parts as well as the ROI and the
business benefits,
but start small by showing themwhat can be done and build on that.
So it's definitely a kind ofa journey. And as you said,
it's a digital transformationpiece as well. It's not just, yeah,
we're going to do ar, there's otherthings that need to be taught about,
and as you said, sometimesit may not be ar,
(18:26):
it may be another kind ofsolution that's needed.
Mark, I think you're exactly right.
We spend a lot of time, you talkedabout plan big, but execute small.
We've tried to bring that same mentalityin and talk about an ecosystem,
but all the projects wepoint to the part of the
(18:48):
ecosystem that we're trying to enable sothat a lot of our initial projects are
capability development, but there'sstill this sort of larger strategy that
this project builds a capability forthis part of the ecosystem that can
be combined or deployed toanother part of the ecosystem
(19:08):
to scale out.
And that's something that I thinkbecause of digital engineering,
we're starting to haveconversations about that,
but it's a mentality that I thinkthe area brought years ago as we
were getting started that helped toinform us and help us to be successful.
(19:29):
And you talked about the ROI,
that return on investment issuch a hard thing to quantify
in many of our augmented realitysolutions because it's so new,
and I know you've got aworkshop that you do quite often
about developing that usecase and then figuring
(19:52):
out what an ROI looks like
from that use case.And that's been one of the biggest,
both challenges and I thinksuccess stories for us is
challenging our team tothink through what does the
tool do,
where does it enable and howdoes it change the way we do business today so that
(20:15):
we can start turning that into atraditional ROI that managers can take
up the line to their bosses.
We basically have to translate from theway we think about the world back into a
traditional business way of thinkingbecause that's the way most of the
(20:35):
world still thinks about dollarsand cents and success and
failure. So if we can take thesetechnologies as we develop them,
show the real value to them,
but also translate that valueinto dollars and cents that
our management lines still understand,
(20:56):
we get asked to come back to do moreprojects and ultimately build this sort of
ecosystem strategy.
Yeah, no, some great insights,Ashley and I absolutely agree.
It's definitely multipledifferent roles and skills
and processes that needed,
and we're definitely seeing a changein how companies are looking at the
(21:20):
technology, which probablytakes me onto the last question
and to pick your brain for the last time.
Aside from joining the area,
what advice can you offer tocompanies starting or looking into
enterprise ar?
Well, I think the first thingI would say is just go try it.
(21:41):
Go try augmented reality.
There are many tools outthere now that are no-code,
low-code kind of solutionsthat can help you get started.
There are also plenty of firms,
university groups thatyou can outsource your
coding functionalityto as you get started,
(22:05):
so don't feel like thelearning curve is too steep.
The second thing I would say is
don't try to figure it out on your own.
The landscape is moving very quicklyand whether it's reaching out through
folks in the area or toother networks that you have,
try to learn from others.Learn their best practices,
(22:29):
learn their lessonslearned. Amongst my DOE,
my Department of Energycolleagues at other labs,
we talk regularly about what we're doing,
why we're doing it, wheredid they have success?
You mentioned security.We work in secure environments sometimes,
and so some of the hardware
(22:53):
capabilities, whether that's the cameras,
the LIDAR scanners, wifi connectivity,
some of those things arechallenges in our traditional
security postures.
And so learning from the otherlabs about what headsets they
(23:13):
were able to get approved,
what kind of limitations they hadto put on software or hardware
to get to yes,
from a security envelopeis really important.
And if we can learn from our peersor learn from others who have
experience,
it will increase our likelihood ofsuccess and take away some of our pain.
(23:39):
Perfect. Yeah. Thankyou very much, Ashley.
Thanks very much for your insightsand please carry on the great work.
Look forward to working with you topromote the work you're doing in the case
studies, but also continue to drivethe ecosystem forward. As you said,
there's a few challenges at the moment.
I know we're working hardto help overcome them,
(23:59):
so thank you very much foryour time and insights today.
Yeah, my pleasure. Mark.
Welcome. I'm Karen Quatromoni,
Director of Public Relations forObject Management Group, OMG.
Welcome to our OMG podcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focused on the AugmentedReality for Enterprise Alliance or AREA.
It is the only global nonprofitmember-based organization that is dedicated to
(00:32):
the adoption of interoperableAR enabled enterprise systems.
The area's executive director MarkSage will lead today's podcast session.
Mark.
Thank you Karen, and welcomeeverybody to our latest podcast.
And I feel like I'd always saythis at the start of the podcast,
(00:53):
but it's really great to haveanother industry expert with us today
who has done a lot inthe AR space over Wow.
And Ashley will introduce himself,
but I certainly know Ashleyprobably for at least five years,
and it's been really interesting followinghis kind of story and what he's been
able to drive. So we're going tofind out a little bit more today.
(01:15):
But rather than me talking, Ashley,
can I ask you to introduce yourself anda little bit about the company you work
for?
Yeah, Mark, thanks for having me on.
I will say I cut my teethwith the AREA as I came up to
speed on augmented realityin this whole space,
so thanks for having me on. Soyeah, my name's Ashley Stowe.
(01:38):
I'm the director of the Oak RidgeEnhanced Technology and Training Center,
we call it, or for short,
we're part of the Y-12National Security Complex,
which is a department of energy nuclearproduction facility in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. That dates backto the Manhattan Project.
(01:58):
Our facility was created todo uranium enrichment and the
uranium manufacturing that helped to builda nuclear weapon that ended World War
II, or at least helped toend World War II And since
1945, we've continued thatsame mission up to today.
But one thing that came with this heritageof understanding nuclear production
(02:22):
is our ability to understand what it takes
to keep the rest of theworld safe from a global
security standpoint.And so our facility or
has the mission of helpingto train first responders
(02:42):
and other types of individualsthat need to understand
nuclear and radiological hazards.
If bad guys try to do badthings in their neighborhood,
oftentimes we will train highconsequence emergency response events
where let's say a nuclear therapy
(03:02):
device which has radioactivematerial in it is
taken out stolen.
The first responders will be thefirst ones to appear on the scene.
And so we need them to understand theseunique hazards so that they can do the
job they're well trainedto do without causing harm
(03:22):
to themselves or to others around themuntil the specialist groups that the
US government has setup are able to arrive.
Yeah, thanks Ashley.
It's a really important job and thankyou for all the kind of work and
training that you've done there.
Maybe focusing a little bit more onthe AR side now that's helping you.
(03:45):
Can you first tell us a littlebit of why you joined the AREA
and what you were kind ofhoping to achieve by joining?
Yeah, so I mentioned we dohigh consequence events,
a high consequence trainingwith high hazard materials.
And so there's really two reasonswe joined the AREA. Number one,
(04:08):
we want to provide a
immersive trainingexperiences that are effective
and really useful in helpingto transfer that understanding
so they're effective in learningwithout putting the hazard
in front of the trainee earlyin their training process.
(04:31):
And so beginning to goto a place like the AREA
that is an industryleader in best practices,
figuring out return on investment,
figuring out the best approacheswithin augmented reality to effectively
deliver content and achieveour training mission was the
(04:52):
primary reason that we beganand we joined the AREA.
But all of this also coincidedwith Covid. Historically,
our training has been,
and when Covid happened, noneof us could get together.
And so we had to figure outanother means to get together
(05:13):
to train our folks who were scatteredall across the world. And what
we started with was Zoommeetings in a conference room,
which is a pretty rough way to go.
And so we reached out to theAREA to begin to understand how
does augmented reality work,how do we design the interfaces,
(05:34):
the training so that we canstill do what we know how to
do in a way that allows us to engage at a
distance in an immersiveway, in an effective way.
So that's why we joined the area.
And over the last five years thatyou and I have gotten to know each
other,
(05:55):
we've continued to push that envelopewith the guidance of you specifically Mark
as the executive director, aswell as the area as a whole,
as we've learned from all thepeer network that's been created.
Yeah, thank Ashley for those kind words.
You've talked a little bit aboutyour company's mission and vision,
(06:17):
things like that. Is there anythingelse you'd like to add to that,
maybe how that's changed afterCovid and do you still have the
same thinking and principles interms of that training that's needed?
So y twelves got three main missions,
the nuclear deterrence, so maintainingthe nuclear weapons production,
(06:42):
that is one of our primary missions. Wealso have a mission in global security,
so keeping America andthe rest of the world safe
by having experts who understandwhat it takes, what to look for,
and we go out and
when we need to bring materials hometo help keep the world safe from a
(07:05):
global security standpoint.
And then we also fuel the nuclear navy.
So we have those three main missions and
or our specific mission andvision is training for those
high consequence
radiological or nuclear eventswithin that global security mission.
(07:27):
And what I would say is as we tryto achieve our mission, or sorry,
our vision of being the preeminenttraining campus for radiation
response or nuclear processing throughthe use of immersive technology,
we really fall into two lines oftraining this high consequence
(07:47):
radiation response trainingthat I've mentioned where again,
we use and leverage thetechnology to provide
realistic immersive training withoutputting the hazard in front of the
individual. But then we'vealso kind of grown into this
nuclear processing business line because
(08:11):
what we found is the samekind of technology enables
learning on the nuclear processing side.
So this is basically manufacturing,
but with our unique materials.
And as the world goesto digital engineering,
as engineering companiesput all of their 3D models,
(08:33):
their CAD models into3D engineering models
that have building informationsystems built into them,
we can leverage the same typeof technology to bring augmented
reality into the factory floor.
So whether that is takingthe engineering models and
(08:54):
optimizing design by beingable to visualize it in three
dimensions,
or even bringing groups together to lookat the same three dimensional objects
spatially viewed through acollaborative extended reality
kind of framework,
or it's training people to use piecesof equipment before that equipment is
(09:16):
even fabricated.
We have found that the engineering world
is setting up a foundation that we canreach into and leverage from an augmented
reality standpoint to make our engineers,
our manufacturing staff andour management staff all
operate more optimallyand make better decisions.
(09:40):
Yeah, thank you, Ashley.
There's obviously lots of different usecases and work you're doing in that kind
of quite wide scope of activities,so that's really great to hear.
And maybe jumping onto the next question,
with that kind of scope of activities,
can you talk a little bit about some ofthe challenges that you've been facing
(10:00):
in deploying enterprise ar?
Well, Mark,
you and I have talked a number of timesabout the challenges of moving from demo
to deployment,
sort of this pilot purgatory I think isthe word that you typically use or the
phrase you typically use.But one of the challenges,
(10:20):
there are so many use casesand there are so many,
the landscape of technology is changingso quickly right now on the headset
side as well as the softwareside that it's hard to
build an enterprisestructure that is manageable.
(10:42):
So oftentimes you'll havefunding for individual projects,
but these individual projectsmay choose a certain headset
or a software set that will
work for the one will
work for that specific application,
(11:04):
but it may not be optimalfor another use case.
And so we're spending a lot of time,
I'm spending a lot of time trying towork with our engineering staff and our
management staff to say,
let's stop working on fundingfor individual projects,
bespoke solutions,
and start thinking about building afoundational structure that links this
(11:27):
digital layer of engineeringto a visualization
layer that leverages digital twins and
iot connectivity so thatwe have visualization
tools and augmented reality orvirtual reality or haptics that we
can actually use across the whole site,
(11:50):
across the whole factory, if you will,
for design, for optimizing manufacturing,
for helping the workers learnand for emergency response
planning.
Yeah,
it's a really interesting and importantpart what you're doing actually moving
from that kind of veryprojects focused approach to a
(12:14):
kind of platform,
almost an internal ecosystemso people can reuse the
components, reuse theprocesses, and like you said,
reuse the hardware and software as well.
So I think in my experience,
as companies begin to evolveand become mature in this space,
they're definitely in that second part,
which is they've created thatkind of set of tools, ecosystem,
(12:38):
even kind of the security parts aroundit so people can then start to really
focus on the use cases thatthey're solving rather than all the other bits that
come with it. So it's reallygreat to hear you on that journey.
Well, yeah, and Mark, ifI can give one example.
So we did a projectrecently where we took a new
(12:58):
manufacturing building,lots of square footage,
lots of complex spaces and rooms,
really expensive complex equipment, and
the initial project wasa few million dollars,
(13:19):
took us a good bit of time,
and then we built atrainer trainer off of it.
Now the real piece of equipment,
the physical piece of equipment is tens of
millions of dollars. We're not goingto build spares to do training,
but because we built that investment,
(13:39):
even though it was a few milliondollars to build out that foundational
investment,
we now have a realistic sim trainer for
procedural operations on apiece of equipment that I can
scale by putting it into aheadset at three to $5,000.
(14:00):
And so if I have many people to train,
I can scale cheaply or at least
economically after that initialinvestment to be able to train
more people at the same time or quicker.
The other thing that we're beginningto understand is the next piece of
equipment that we try to build withinthat large complex of manufacturing
(14:25):
is a much lower unit pricebecause we already have the
foundational pieces of thebuilding and the structure.
Helping our management team andhelping our engineering team
understand the value of theseinitial investments and how
(14:46):
that scales from a returnon investment or a unit
cost to build out other pieces has been
a challenge. But I think in some wayswe're able to start showing it and putting
our augmented reality toolswhere our mouth was to show
(15:06):
the benefit of how we can use it and why
those initial investments were valuable.
So it still remains to be seen if wehave buy-in the freedom to build out the
rest of the pieces of equipment,
but we're starting to seethe changing thought process
and begin to come forth.
(15:29):
Yeah, that's reallyinteresting. Thank you.
Maybe just asking to extend that question,
what other insights have you gained
over the years and how do you see thoseinsights driving enterprise AR adoption?
Is there anything else you can talk about?
Augmented reality? You and I talkabout augmented reality quite a bit,
(15:52):
but the landscape is changing becausethe manufacturing is changing.
Some of our primary headsetmanufacturers have exited the space,
new ones are coming in pass through,
virtual reality is coming in.
And so for the folks likeyou or like me within
companies,
(16:14):
while we are advocating forthe use of augmented reality,
I do think it's important thatwe're honest about how we use
augmented reality.
When we use augmented realityand where we have actually
built the most
trust is when we'll have a customer say,
(16:37):
can you build me anaugmented reality solution?
And we start asking the questions aboutwhat is it you're actually trying to do
to then ultimately in some cases say,
we don't think augmented realityis the best solution for you.
And so saying no when it's appropriateactually gives us more trust
(16:58):
and has customers come back tous more often in cases where we
can say yes.
And so being honest aboutwhat augmented reality can
do, how you can buildaugmented reality solutions,
I think is really importantat scaling this from
really flashy contentdemos that management
(17:23):
can get behind early on tosomething that is truly scalable
and will last as anevolution of a way of doing
business.
Yeah, thank you, Ashley. I thinkyou, you're absolutely right.
I think also being able to help
(17:43):
everybody within your organization goon a journey is a case quite often.
And they use the term plan big,but actually deliver small.
You don't want to getinto pilot purgatory,
but you want to make sure that youunderstand or parts of the organization
understand and come along from thesecurity teams, from the IT teams,
(18:04):
from the safety managers and all kind ofother parts as well as the ROI and the
business benefits,
but start small by showing themwhat can be done and build on that.
So it's definitely a kind ofa journey. And as you said,
it's a digital transformationpiece as well. It's not just, yeah,
we're going to do ar, there's otherthings that need to be taught about,
and as you said, sometimesit may not be ar,
(18:26):
it may be another kind ofsolution that's needed.
Mark, I think you're exactly right.
We spend a lot of time, you talkedabout plan big, but execute small.
We've tried to bring that same mentalityin and talk about an ecosystem,
but all the projects wepoint to the part of the
(18:48):
ecosystem that we're trying to enable sothat a lot of our initial projects are
capability development, but there'sstill this sort of larger strategy that
this project builds a capability forthis part of the ecosystem that can
be combined or deployed toanother part of the ecosystem
(19:08):
to scale out.
And that's something that I thinkbecause of digital engineering,
we're starting to haveconversations about that,
but it's a mentality that I thinkthe area brought years ago as we
were getting started that helped toinform us and help us to be successful.
(19:29):
And you talked about the ROI,
that return on investment issuch a hard thing to quantify
in many of our augmented realitysolutions because it's so new,
and I know you've got aworkshop that you do quite often
about developing that usecase and then figuring
(19:52):
out what an ROI looks like
from that use case.And that's been one of the biggest,
both challenges and I thinksuccess stories for us is
challenging our team tothink through what does the
tool do,
where does it enable and howdoes it change the way we do business today so that
(20:15):
we can start turning that into atraditional ROI that managers can take
up the line to their bosses.
We basically have to translate from theway we think about the world back into a
traditional business way of thinkingbecause that's the way most of the
(20:35):
world still thinks about dollarsand cents and success and
failure. So if we can take thesetechnologies as we develop them,
show the real value to them,
but also translate that valueinto dollars and cents that
our management lines still understand,
(20:56):
we get asked to come back to do moreprojects and ultimately build this sort of
ecosystem strategy.
Yeah, no, some great insights,Ashley and I absolutely agree.
It's definitely multipledifferent roles and skills
and processes that needed,
and we're definitely seeing a changein how companies are looking at the
(21:20):
technology, which probablytakes me onto the last question
and to pick your brain for the last time.
Aside from joining the area,
what advice can you offer tocompanies starting or looking into
enterprise ar?
Well, I think the first thingI would say is just go try it.
(21:41):
Go try augmented reality.
There are many tools outthere now that are no-code,
low-code kind of solutionsthat can help you get started.
There are also plenty of firms,
university groups thatyou can outsource your
coding functionalityto as you get started,
(22:05):
so don't feel like thelearning curve is too steep.
The second thing I would say is
don't try to figure it out on your own.
The landscape is moving very quicklyand whether it's reaching out through
folks in the area or toother networks that you have,
try to learn from others.Learn their best practices,
(22:29):
learn their lessonslearned. Amongst my DOE,
my Department of Energycolleagues at other labs,
we talk regularly about what we're doing,
why we're doing it, wheredid they have success?
You mentioned security.We work in secure environments sometimes,
and so some of the hardware
(22:53):
capabilities, whether that's the cameras,
the LIDAR scanners, wifi connectivity,
some of those things arechallenges in our traditional
security postures.
And so learning from the otherlabs about what headsets they
(23:13):
were able to get approved,
what kind of limitations they hadto put on software or hardware
to get to yes,
from a security envelopeis really important.
And if we can learn from our peersor learn from others who have
experience,
it will increase our likelihood ofsuccess and take away some of our pain.
(23:39):
Perfect. Yeah. Thankyou very much, Ashley.
Thanks very much for your insightsand please carry on the great work.
Look forward to working with you topromote the work you're doing in the case
studies, but also continue to drivethe ecosystem forward. As you said,
there's a few challenges at the moment.
I know we're working hardto help overcome them,
(23:59):
so thank you very much foryour time and insights today.
Yeah, my pleasure. Mark.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!