Hunter Industries Selects Augmentir to Digitally Transform its Manufacturing Operations

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The company adopts Augmentir’s AI-powered Connected Worker platform to empower its manufacturing workforce and improve operational efficiency

HORSHAM, PA – September 9, 2020 – Augmentir, Inc., the leading provider of artificial intelligence-based connected worker software for industrial companies, announced today that Hunter Industries, a global manufacturer of products for the irrigation, outdoor lighting, dispensing technology, and custom manufacturing sectors, has selected Augmentir as its next-generation Connected Worker platform for its manufacturing operations.

Hunter offers a full spectrum of water- and energy-efficient solutions for residential, commercial, municipal, and agricultural applications. The company’s diverse array of products can be seen all over the world. Hunter prides itself on core values of customer satisfaction, innovation, social responsibility, and valuing employees. The selection of Augmentir’s connected worker platform reinforces those themes, allowing Hunter to deliver digital tools that help their manufacturing workforce perform at their best and improve overall efficiency. The company’s initial focus for Augmentir is on their injection Molding and Extrusion departments, where changeover processes often lead to lengthy downtime.

Augmentir’s software platform allows Hunter to:

  • Digitize and standardize on work instructions for manufacturing, changeover, and quality assurance (QA) procedures
  • Create and deploy work instructions at a faster rate
  • Accelerate onboarding and provide on-the-job instant training for technicians
  • Gather instant feedback from their technicians as they perform tasks
  • Reduce scrap and prevent unplanned downtime and quality issues within its manufacturing operation
  • Provide remote guidance tools for technicians, allowing them to virtually connect with subject matter experts to help resolve manufacturing or maintenance issues

“The use of Augmentir within our manufacturing operation highlights our commitment to our people and innovation in the workplace,” stated Yunior Murillo, Operations Training Supervisor at Hunter Industries. “Augmentir’s platform allows our technicians to perform at their best while improving efficiency across our manufacturing department. Additionally, the operational insights provided by Augmentir’s AI allow us to focus our training efforts on individuals that need them most and intelligently guide our technicians in their day-to-day activities.”

The Augmentir Connected Worker Platform is a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools designed to help manufacturing and service teams improve operations, close skills gaps, capture tribal knowledge, and drive continuous improvement efforts. The platform provides tools to help teams author and publish digital work instructions and workflows and also provides an industrial remote assistance and collaboration solution to support remote expert guidance scenarios. In addition, the platform delivers AI-based organization-wide insights and recommendations that focus on improving the quality and productivity of frontline workers.

“We are excited to work with Hunter and bring an innovative connected worker technology to its manufacturing operation,” stated Russ Fadel, CEO and Co-Founder of Augmentir. “Our AI-based Connected Worker platform helps industrial companies to intelligently close skills gaps so that the entire workforce can perform at its peak.”

Hunter plans to expand its use of Augmentir across its operation and into its maintenance group, furthering the workforce efficiency and continuous improvement benefits that the platform offers.

 

About Hunter Industries

Hunter Industries is a global manufacturer of products for the irrigation, landscape lighting, custom manufacturing, and dispensing technology sectors. Founded in 1981, the family-owned company offers more than 1,000 products, including a complete spectrum of water-efficient solutions for residential, commercial, golf course, and agricultural irrigation systems. Hunter’s core mission will always remain the same: to deliver valued products and services, grow the company conscientiously, and remain true to the culture that make its employees proud to work at Hunter.

About Augmentir

Augmentir™ is the world’s only AI-Powered Connected Worker platform for industrial companies. Augmentir is the first of its kind to combine enterprise augmented reality (AR) with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to intelligently close skills gaps so that frontline workers can perform their jobs with higher quality and increased productivity while driving continuous improvement across the organization. Augmentir is being used to help intelligently guide and support frontline workers in a wide range of industrial use cases – from manufacturing teams on the shop floor to service and repair teams out in the field. For more information, please visit www.augmentir.com.

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Colgate-Palmolive Selects Augmentir to Accelerate Digitization in Manufacturing Operations

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In support of their global digital transformation efforts, Colgate-Palmolive’s Global Supply Chain group had been exploring tools to digitize equipment changeover and maintenance operations and have selected Augmentir’s Connected Worker Platform.

In support of their global digital transformation efforts, Colgate-Palmolive’s Global Supply Chain group had been exploring tools to digitize equipment changeover and maintenance operations plus integrate into Colgate’s SAP ERP and MES Wonderware Systems and have selected Augmentir’s Connected Worker Platform.

Augmentir’s “AI-based” Connected Worker Platform offers connected worker technology with augmented work instructions. Equipped with digital devices that could include tablets, mobile phones, or even AR-enabled industrial smart glasses, frontline workers are able to receive fully augmented, guided instructions on any device to improve productivity, quality and allow workers to perform their jobs more independently. These help guide workers with visual aids, AR/MR experiences, and contextual information.

Significant Results in 6 Short Months

Since the selection of Augmentir in November 2020, Colgate has already seen tremendous progress towards its goals, and deployment has helped enable people at each of our global plants to build, maintain, and share their own localized content, plus boost adoption and productivity.

According to Colgate-Palmolive: “Augmentir platform’s ease of use and broad applicability to different scenarios helped to enable people at each of our global plants to build, maintain, and share their own localized content, and has boosted adoption”. Their results include:

  • 1060+ Digital WorkFlows created across 10 Plants (maintenance procedure, workflow, changeover, shift change
  • More than 16,500 Workflow executions and 500+ Procedures optimized
  • 10-30 minutes saved per shift
  • As much as 120 minutes reduced between Maintenance Notification and Maintenance Order Closure (Maintenance Execution Time)
  • Advanced statistics available for integration with other CP datasets for future integrations and improvements
  • Actual Maintenance Work Order times automatically captured and recorded in SAP PM, increasing the accuracy of maintenance planning and scheduling for sites utilizing SAP integration

Read the full article below.

 

Colgate-Palmolive Accelerates Digitization in Manufacturing Operations

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STRONGARM Expands Use of Augmentir to Improve Manufacturing Quality

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STRONGARM chose the Augmentir platform because of its ability to help them modernize their manufacturing environment and improve quality and efficiency

August 11, 2020

STRONGARM is a small to mid-sized company that designs and manufactures ergonomic and environmentally protected workstations for companies in a wide range of market segments, including life sciences, food and beverage, oil and gas, healthcare, and general manufacturing.

The company initially deployed Augmentir’s software platform 12 months ago, with a focus on improving quality assurance (QA) processes. STRONGARM had previously relied on paper-based work instructions and QA checklists, but as growth and shipments picked up, this method became unwieldy and the company selected Augmentir’s software platform to help digitize its operational workflows and improve quality.

“What we really liked about Augmentir was that they are a modern, SaaS-based company that really fit within our IT needs and helped us meet our quality and continuous improvement objectives. With Augmentir, we found a simple and easy-to-implement solution that allowed us to get going in less than an hour, and the results have been fantastic.”

Steve Thorne, President and CEO of STRONGARM

STRONGARM chose the Augmentir platform because of its ability to help them modernize their manufacturing environment and improve quality and efficiency. The company was able to quickly evaluate the Augmentir software platform, prove out key use cases, and fully implement the platform within days – all without significant IT involvement.

STRONGARM’s initial focus with the Augmentir platform was on the assembly and final quality control processes for the company’s most complex workstation and industrial display unit. Augmentir’s rapid authoring environment allowed STRONGARM to quickly migrate their existing paper-based instructions to digital, augmented instructions that incorporated rich media, checklists, verifications, and several other features that were central to their assembly and QC processes.

Using Augmentir has allowed STRONGARM to not only digitize their operation, but also realize significant improvements in quality and performance. With Augmentir, STRONGARM has been able to:

  • Completely digitize their Quality Assurance (QA) processes
  • Reduce QA time per system by 50% – from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes
  • 20% reduction in average build time in their most complex workstations
  • Improve and standardize on required QA and audit activities

According to Steve Thorne, General Manager at STRONGARM, “Augmentir’s AI-based ‘True Opportunity™’ system enables us to gain insight into how our technicians are performing, and autonomously identifies our largest capturable opportunities across our entire operation.”

“Because the process was so easy, our technicians were able to quickly incorporate Augmentir into their daily operations, and the results were immediate – technician productivity improved, and inspection times went down. Furthermore, when one of our senior and most experienced technicians retired recently, we were able to onboard a new technician and trust Augmentir’s AI engine to guide him during the learning curve to get product out the door at 100% quality so that we didn’t miss shipments. Once Augmentir’s AI engine determined that the worker had become proficient, it recommended that the instructions should be adjusted to enable him to complete the job faster while still meeting quality and safety goals. This has resulted in a 20% reduction in average build time in our most complex workstations.” Thorne added that based on the initial successes, STRONGARM plans to expand its use of Augmentir into the manufacturing operations of their ruggedized workstations used in the oil and gas industry.

“Based on the success of Augmentir for our QA processes, we have expanded the system into other areas of our manufacturing operation, including complex assembly, shipment staging, and preventive maintenance,” added Thorne. “Augmentir’s AI engine automatically helps identify the biggest areas of quality improvement – this is helping support our organization wide continuous improvement and quality initiatives”

From day one, Augmentir has been focused on providing affordable and easy-to-use solutions that create sustainable value for small, medium, and large sized businesses. The platform provides a suite of AI-powered tools to help teams author and publish digital work instructions and workflows and also provides an industrial remote assistance and collaboration solution to support remote expert guidance scenarios. In addition, the platform delivers AI-based organization-wide insights and recommendations that focus on improving the quality and productivity of frontline workers.

 

Bio-Chem Fluidics Drives Continuous Improvement across its Manufacturing Operation with Augmentir

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Find out how Bio-Chem Fluidics was able to reduce training times of new hires by over 80% (from three months down to two weeks) using Augmentir’s AI-powered augmented worker platform.

In this Case Study, you will learn how Bio-Chem Fluidics used Augmentir to:

  • Move from paper-based to interactive augmented instructions for assembly and QA procedures
  • Collect and provide insights on the granular assembly data required for their lean manufacturing initiatives and increasingly stringent regulatory requirements
  • Drive quality improvements through validation of critical assembly steps
  • Provide built in “training” for less experienced assemblers and temps
  • Reduce training time by over 80% (from three months down to two weeks)