News: Thyssenkrupp Claims Up to 4x Faster Workflow with HoloLens

Microsoft announced yet another exciting partnership for HoloLens today — thyssenkrupp, an industrial engineering company best known for their elevators — continuing to prove how useful augmented reality is in the workplace.

The announcement video shows off the HoloLens workflow for thyssenkrupp's stairlifts to help those with mobility and accessibility problems up and down household staircases so that people can be "mobile in the own environment."

Installing stairlifts can be challenging because every home staircase is unique and there is no one size fits all lift for them. Every stairlift must be customized to each individual staircase, so measuring, manufacturing, and installation takes quite a bit of time. Using the HoloLens can make these steps more efficient.

The stairlift engineer is guided through the process on the HoloLens, as seen below.

The mixed reality headset performs digital data capturing by measuring the steps of the staircase and keeping a record of this data. Below is an example of what measuring a staircase with a HoloLens would look like.

This data is uploaded to the Microsoft cloud in real time, so the manufacturing site has access and production on the stairlift can begin immediately. Simon Feismann, Head of Product Lifecycle Management at thyssenkrupp, commented that incorporating the HoloLens into the manufacturing could make the process up to four times faster than before.

There will also be the option of showing a preview of the stairlift to customers via an animation provided by the HoloLens.

If thyssenkrupp sounds familiar at all to you, that's because our very own contributing editor, Jason Odom, was part of a team that won the thyssenkrupp-sponsored HoloHack "Smart Cities" event back in December 2016. You can read more about his winning project here.

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