Machinery Manufacturer Orkel Grows With Assisted Reality Devices

Orkel, a Norwegian manufacturer of compactors and other machinery for agriculture, industry, and waste management has integrated RealWear's wearable AR devices across its business and dealer network to provide real-time customer support, eliminating wait times and downtime delays.

Orkel initially purchased 40 units to be used for remote after-sales maintenance, remote servicing, and remote commissioning of its agricultural machine products. Its R&D team had tested a variety of AR smart glasses before landing on RealWear's HMT-1 head-mounted displays. According to Orkel, the HMT-1's durability, safety features, noise cancellation, and battery life were the deciding factors.

With the HMT-1, customers can connect to service technicians completely remotely; each customer in need of commissioning or a technical service receives a kit consisting of the HMT-1, a hardhat, and mounting clips. By providing this after-sales service support, Orkel customers can easily don the device, contact the technician using voice commands and start working with the technician to resolve issues. Technicians can immediately see what the customer sees through the head-mounted camera and software, VSight. At the end, the customer can choose to purchase the RealWear device for their own use or return it to Orkel.

Being able to handle commissioning and maintenance issues remotely instead of having technicians make an in-person trip has cut down significantly on travel times and costs as well as delays for customers. 

“Our customers really appreciate the value of the system because we are able to provide a much faster level of support when an issue arises. All too often, our service technicians would travel for what turned out to be a quick fix. Now, with RealWear, many hours of time and CO₂ emissions are saved, and most importantly customers’ machines are operational again quickly, which is imperative during the harvest season,” said Svein Erik Syrstad, technician at Orkel.

Orkel uses VSight Remote software, a RealWear partner. The platform helps companies conduct maintenance operations remotely with AR.

The Orkel machine’s telemetry system ensures that details about every aspect of the machine’s operation are sent securely to the cloud, enabling Orkel’s technicians to read the data and guide their customers to the next step in the procedure. This information enables Orkel to target the specific error more efficiently, and then guide the operator remotely to resolution.

“We really adore this technology because as a research & development engineer, I can watch the work being done,” said Magnus Nordås Lervik, Project Engineer, Orkel.

I’m quickly learning better ways to design future machinery as I’ve seen first-hand the common issues that arise, and how they are fixed. Using this technology enables our research and development team to look ahead to how we might design products in the future from an operator’s perspective.”

“Orkel and its customers are achieving a number of benefits since deploying RealWear’s technology with VSight and Microsoft Teams,” added Jon Arnold, Vice President of EMEA, RealWear Inc.

When looking at the agricultural industry as a whole, machine downtime impacts productivity and efficiency, especially in shorter and shorter harvest seasons. Remote assistance with RealWear is becoming a game-changer for the farming and agriculture industry when every second matters.”