Mixed Reality in the service of industry: the inspiring experience of UIMM Occitanie

Mixed Reality (MR) is currently transforming the industrial landscape, opening new avenues for training, collaboration, and operational efficiency. In a recent interview with Romain Metillon, Industry Lab Manager at UIMM Occitanie, we explored how UIMM’s branches in Toulouse and Montpellier are assisting small and medium-sized enterprises in adopting MR to create increasingly innovative projects, enhance training programs, and boost competitiveness.

Synergiz supports UIMM in adopting and deploying mixed reality projects with four fundamental objectives:

• Facilitating training: Mixed Reality is an intriguing tool for improving training, whether locally or remotely, by targeting trainers and apprentices. This approach offers significant benefits in terms of flexibility and efficiency.
• Attracting new talent: UIMM Occitanie cleverly utilizes MR to make industrial sectors more appealing to candidates, especially apprentices. This approach has also been successfully employed at student fairs to introduce future learners to industrial careers.
• Inter-site collaboration: Mixed Reality is deployed to facilitate collaboration among UIMM stakeholders located at various geographical sites, ensuring uniformity in training content and simplifying knowledge sharing.
• Enhancing competitiveness: Mixed Reality has become a differentiating asset, particularly for small businesses that must continuously adapt to new technologies and upskill to remain competitive in an increasingly volatile market.

UIMM Occitanie employs several mixed reality applications for various purposes:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist: This application offers a remote maintenance solution, reducing travel while providing quick access to experts at a distance. This translates to a rapid return on investment.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides: Used for demonstration and training, Guides centralizes data and enables rapid content duplication. The application is user-friendly and boasts a high adoption rate.
• Synergiz Harbor: This French application offers advanced 3D visualization and collaboration features. It is particularly suitable for sharing rich educational content and facilitating interactions between trainers and learners.

Despite the numerous advantages of mixed reality, UIMM Occitanie highlights several challenges:

• Knowledge and democratization: practical knowledge of mixed reality technology remains a major challenge. Therefore, the Synergiz teams place particular emphasis on training users to ensure independent and confident usage.
• Limiting beliefs: small businesses sometimes fear that new technologies are reserved for large multinational corporations and hesitate to invest due to financial and human resource constraints. The perception of an off-the-shelf and easy-to-use solution is crucial to overcoming this reluctance and promoting adoption.
• Technical concerns: concerns persist regarding the resilience of mixed reality devices in demanding environments, as well as issues related to cybersecurity and data management. Proven and effective solutions, however, are available to address these challenges.