Global Opererations Strategy / CaseVR
We use virtual reality (VR) to teach operations management. Students virtually visit real factories in different countries to solve realistic tasks aimed at improving productivity. We use an open-access VR app from ABB that provides virtual environments of five ABB factories in three countries. We also use VR-videos of factory operations available on YouTube. This teaching innovation is cost-efficient and scalable. We provide students an immersive and inquiry-based learning experience.
Keywords
Course description
Project description
Our vision is to bring the factory to the classroom by integrating virtual reality (VR) in production and operations management courses. The main educational objective of integrating VR was to enhance the students’ learning experience and learning outcomes. We provide the students the effective learning experience of exploring a real factory environment. At the same time, we circumvent the many administrative and financial limitations of field visits. Due to developments in VR technologies, VR offers excellent opportunities to do so.
VR is an artificial environment that is presented to the user in such a way that the user experiences it as a close-to-real environment. Simple forms of VR are 3-D images and videos that are explored with wearable VR viewers or a computer interface.
In partnership with the ABB Group (hereafter ABB), we integrated VR technology in a course assignment. To solve the assignment, students visited virtual factory environments, which supplemented other material available online and in-class lectures. The virtual factory environment comprises five facilities of ABB, located in Switzerland, Germany, and Finland, which the students could explore without having to visit physically. The ABB VR app “360 VR Tours” can be downloaded free of charge on Apple App Store and Google Play. The app encompasses 360-degree videos and still pictures, blended with additional instructions and information, such as factory layout drawings. In the app, students can visit a number of predefined areas in the factory in any order they like.
The figures above show snapshot examples from the VR app. For each 3D image, the red arrow is used to navigate to the next station in the app and the red “i” contains blended information about the work process.
The VR environment works on any smartphone used with a commercially available VR viewer. The typical price for simple VR viewers for smart phones ranges from CHF 3 to CHF 50 (e.g., Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR). We first provided the students cardboard viewers and later—with Innovedum funding—plastic viewers for their phones.
Contact information
Further involved persons:
- All scientific staff of the Chair of Production and Operations Management (POM), D-MTEC
- ETH Educational Development and Technology (LET): Karin Brown
- ETH D-MTEC Educational Developer Dr. Erik Jentges
Papers
- external page Netland, T.; Flaeschner, O.; Brown, K.; Maghazei, O. (2019) Teaching Operations Management with Virtual Reality: Bringing the Factory to the Student, Journal of Management Education, 44(3): 313-341.
- external page Netland T.H., Lorenz R., Senoner J. (2020) Teaching Lean with Virtual Reality: Gemba VR. In: Rossi M., Rossini M., Terzi S. (eds) Proceedings of the 6th European Lean Educator Conference. ELEC 2019. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 122. Springer, Cham.