Motivation

In the course of rapidly advancing product individualization and digitization, employees are increasingly confronted with new, regularly changing tasks.

As a result, the development of knowledge for new employees and the further training of existing employees is becoming both more complex and more relevant.

In the skilled trades sector in particular, this development is overlaid with the shortage of skilled workers and demographic change prevailing in Germany. On the one hand, there are too few interested trainees to fill the available positions, and on the other hand, an increasing number of long-serving employees of retirement age are leaving the company, along with their often implicit knowledge.

This is also problematic in view of the fact that in many cases in craft enterprises there is no effective storage of knowledge, but only a direct transfer from trainer:in to trainee.

Accordingly, when an employee leaves, a large part of the knowledge acquired in professional practice is often lost.

Objectives

The overall objective of the EasyARGuide project is the same as that of the Mittelstand-Digital Network, namely to make medium-sized companies fit for the future with the help of new, digital applications and technologies. To this end, the EasyARGuide project aims to develop software that allows companies to record training content themselves and then use these recordings as teaching material for training. The focus is on user-friendliness, since the recording and editing of the training material is to be carried out directly in the company by the trainer. The use of the tool for imparting knowledge to the trainee should also be as intuitive as possible, so as not to add to the already existing complexity. The EasyARGuide is also intended to address the challenge of knowledge preservation, as the inclusion of the teaching material will safeguard the employees' many years of knowledge and enable it to be passed on as required.

In addition, the EasyARGuide and the associated use of augmented reality technology should appeal above all to the young, technology-savvy generation and thus make training in the skilled trades more attractive.

Approaches

To develop the EasyARGuide, a teaching-learning concept is first developed that is tailored to the augmented reality technology and can fully exploit its functionalities. In the next step, a prototype is developed which, based on the teaching-learning concept, conveys the training content to the learners. This prototype will be used for validation at the acquired industrial partner, ElbHandWerk, a sanitary construction company from the Hamburg area. During the usage phase, the feedback of these competent users will be collected continuously. Based on this feedback, the technical realization as well as the initially designed teaching-learning concept will be iteratively and constantly adapted to the requirements of the companies. The aim is to develop a practical and mature product. After adjustments and the finalization of the prototype, the finished product will be available for use by small and medium-sized enterprises within the framework of the Mittelstand-Digital Consortium.

Acknowledgement

This project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection in the Mittelstand-Digital funding program. We thank you for the opportunity to work on this project.

Funding source

Consortium partners

Project sponsors