Comparative Evaluation of Virtual Reality and In-Person Onboarding for Assembly Trainings in Manufacturing

In recent years, employee turnover has increased to the point where the manufacturing workforce is constantly changing. The onboarding and training processes are time-consuming and costly. Virtual reality (VR) allows skills to be trained before working on the actual production line and learning in a safe environment. This approach promises cost and productivity benefits for companies and a personalized learning experience for users. In this paper, we present the results of a user evaluation of an industrial VR use case for training the assembly of a compressor. The goal of the evaluation is to compare conventional onboarding training in-person with VR training in terms of learning success, workload, net promotion score, and qualitative feedback. Additionally, user acceptance and usability of the VR training are questioned. The results show that the users still prefer conventional training, as the net promoter score is higher for the in-person training. Also, the results of the learning success show better results for in-person training than the VR training.