Digitalizing work with remote technologies

Today, digitalization is well underway. We all know the reasons for implementing it: It saves time, boosts efficiency and productivity, and makes good economic sense.

According to a recent Gartner report, 91% of businesses are engaged in some form of digital initiative, and 87% of senior business leaders say digitalization is a priority.

And it’s a constantly growing business. According to the World Economic Forum, digital transformation could reach USD $100 trillion in societal and industrial value by 2025.

The change is slowly unfolding

Despite the clear value of digitalization, however, we’re seeing fairly traditional setups across manufacturing, industrial, and OT service environments. This often takes the form of a monolithic automation pyramid, with production at the base, then operations management, and finally planning and logistics at its peak

In this setup, the distinct parts of the process have little communication with each other. As a result, we’re not taking advantage of the main opportunity of today’s digital technologies; namely, to digitalize and optimize structures and work processes, creating a world that works better.

Nonetheless, we are seeing a shift taking shape in networked, automated, and digital production. Gradually, the monolithic pyramid is being replaced by flexible applications, processes, and microservices capable of responding to unique needs.

More and more companies are now jumping right in and embracing digitalization. Among other things, they are using cloud computing, integrating IT within OT systems, and applying the latest digital technologies to drive connection and push their companies forward.

The role of remote software in digital transformation

Here at TeamViewer, we support our customers to drive digital transformation and sustainability, navigate the skills gap, and power hybrid and remote work.

But how are we doing this? Across use cases, the unique power of our technology lies in its ability to connect.

With it, the real world is translated into data that can be used elsewhere. This data can then be plugged into other sets, contributing to a more connected and more efficient world.

By enabling our customers to digitize processes, bridge sets of data, and implement more connected models of work, we are helping them to continuously optimize their operations. Here are some of the key ways we’re helping them do this.

Read more: IT and OT: So close, yet so far

Seeing anew with augmented reality

Digital technologies hold the power of visualization. With them, we can layer digital directly information onto the real world. Everything we need is suddenly at our fingertips.

Many companies are now making use of augmented reality (AR) to improve the efficiency and productivity of frontline work. With smart glasses or headsets, workers have key information on the go, meaning they can work with more ease, efficiency, and speed.

One company making use of this technology is the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC). One of the largest bottlers for the Coca-Cola Company in terms of volume, it has sales of more than two billion units annually.

The company now uses vision picking with TeamViewer Frontline to streamline operations and reduce error rates. With our solution, it has been able to achieve 99% picking accuracy and a 6-8% increase in performance. It has done this by making use of key digital information in the real world.

Leveraging data with digital twins

Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical objects, systems, or processes that simulate their real-world counterparts in real-time. These offer lots of operational benefits, including increased efficiency and improved decision-making and adaptability.

We’re seeing that digital twins are proving particularly useful in low-margin industries that already have a lot of 3D data to hand—aerospace, transportation, and other large projects—and where it’s simply not possible to troubleshoot or train on the real thing.

In the case of training, as my colleague Lukas Bertram put it in a recent article, digital twins offer a unique solution, supporting people to learn in a space when “nothing can break.”

As digital information, they also support the creation of searchable and trackable training programs capable of continuously changing and improving in response to user needs.

And their value doesn’t end there. By translating the real machines, systems, and processes into usable data, digital twins can also be plugged into further data sets.

In our case, Frontline’s integration with Siemens Teamcenter—a product lifecycle management (PLM) platform—allows digital twin technology to be used once the product has been passed onto the customer, resulting in improved troubleshooting and reduced costs for the manufacturer.

Read more: Exploring digital twins: The future of digital transformation

Even better support with spatial computing

Broadly speaking, spatial computing is technology that integrates and interacts with the physical world in a three-dimensional space. This encompasses AR, virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies, along with physical devices like the Apple Vision Pro.

One example is Spatial Support, TeamViewer’s recently launched app for the Apple Vision Pro. Leveraging the device’s incredible fidelity, the app enables support that’s more supportive than ever before.

Read more: With Apple Vision Pro, TeamViewer enters a new era of remote support | TeamViewer

Continuous learning with AI