More than a third of the manufacturing sector CEOs and other key decision-makers identify XR (Extended Reality) as a possible solution to the labor problems in manufacturing.
You can use XR—which is a collective term for VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), and MR (Mixed Reality)—as part of your training program and achieve a lot of key results:
1. Reduce workers’ time to competency
You have to get your new hires up to speed and be productive as fast as possible. The faster you can train them enough to be on the floor, the more improvements you’ll experience in productivity.
Providing industrial workforce training using XR helps you achieve this. According to a 2025 study, AR/VR training reduced average training time to 61.43 minutes from the 120 minutes it averaged for traditional training methods.
A near 50% improvement in training speed for hundreds of employees adds up quite fast.
Consider how much the benefits of higher speed compound when using AR/VR for frontline worker training across numerous facilities or plants.
2. Eliminate talent gap
The manufacturing sector will require 3.8 million new employees between 2024 and 2033, as per a report from The Manufacturing Institute. 1.9 million jobs (half of these) will remain unfilled if the sector doesn’t solve its current talent crisis.
XR in manufacturing is the perfect solution. Industrial XR training solutions help you standardize training across all your manufacturing facilities. Every worker who joins your organization learns the same procedures.
This standardization, combined with the fast pace of industrial workforce training with XR, helps you keep a steady flow of skilled workers. You effectively eliminate the talent gap.
3. Guidance at the right time
At times, even your experienced workers might get stuck on things. They might require assistance from someone else in your organization who is a specialist.
In a lot of cases, if the specialist isn’t available on the premises, the operations can stall. Particularly, if it’s around a machine that is a key part of the manufacturing process.
XR—particularly AR—can help with this. Your worker can wear AR glasses and communicate with the specialist while performing the procedure. The specialist can guide the worker from a remote location, as they can see the exact visuals the worker is seeing through the AR glasses.
No need for waiting for the specialist to fly in or halt any ongoing processes for a long time. Use cases of XR in manufacturing, like AR-based guidance, can take care of those.
4. Training on hazardous environments
You might have your workforce operate in high-risk environments—like an aluminium smelting floor or an oil and gas refinery.
Or you might have them execute high-risk procedures—like working at height or doing maintenance in confined spaces.
In both these scenarios, small hazards are costly. It can lead to injuries and even fatalities.
The best shield you have to protect against such problems is training. Through structured, thorough training, you can help your workers learn the safety procedures they must follow—to keep themselves and everyone around them safe.
Traditional training methods like classroom lectures and video sessions don’t give you the results you want. Because these methods deliver information in a single direction—from the lecturer to the workers—and as a result, knowledge retention rates are low.
You may return from the lecture hall thinking you have memorized everything the lecturer said. But you may struggle to recall the information two weeks later, when you actually have to perform the procedure.
That’s why enterprises are increasingly adopting XR for industrial workforce training. By using AR/VR training for frontline workers, you let your workers actually do the procedures inside a virtual environment. You can even make them practice the procedures repeatedly, until they’ve mastered them.
Data shows that if you compare XR training against traditional training, the former increases safety awareness by 30%. It also makes workers more aware of risks and improves their self-efficacy, too.
Our deployment with JSW is a great example of this. AutoVRse has created safety modules in XR for training industrial workforce of JSW, particularly VR. Using these, the manufacturing giant has trained 5000+ workers across 17 plants.
In 2025, not a single VR-trained worker was involved in a safety incident. A true testament to the impact of deploying immersive training for industrial workers.
Want to know more about how JSW deployed XR for industrial workforce training and achieved improved safety?
5. Reduce cognitive friction
The chief cause of downtime in industrial environments is human error. Even a minor error from any of your workers can stop an ongoing process.
The reason again comes back to training. In enterprises, workers learn the layout of the environment they have to work in through 2D images. The instructions they have to follow are also given on paper.
It takes a lot of cognitive effort to translate that information into the three-dimensional environments they’ll work in. In times of emergency, the friction is too much, and your workers won’t be able to execute procedures.
Industrial workforce training using XR overcomes this by reproducing your exact plant layouts and procedures. In VR, you can let your workers get accustomed to the environment and master the procedures. You can also use AR to overlay critical information on top of real-world equipment and machinery, so they have step-by-step guidance as to what to do.
