Improving Maintenance Services through Virtual Reality

Services for maintenance of industrial systems and machines have several critical aspects. Typically, they require stopping the production for performing interventions on the machines, which may also be risky and harmful for inexperienced operators. The use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies allows companies to perform training on these operations in a safe environment before operators have to perform ordinary maintenance tasks. Contrary to what one might think, VR applications do not necessarily require expensive hardware and software technologies for their implementation. This chapter describes the development of a low-cost VR application to support training for ordinary and preventive maintenance on industrial machines. The case study presented is prosed by OCRIM, a company producing wheat mill plants. The VR application is non-immersive, low cost and allows operators learning how to perform specific maintenance tasks, which have been proposed by the company for their particular importance. Skilled and non-skilled users have tested the proposed solution. Tests have highlighted that VR allows performing operators’ training in shorter time compared to traditional training modalities. Furthermore, even operators with low familiarity with VR and digital technologies were able to learn quickly how to use the VR training application.