How Mitsubishi Electric is Creating Innovative VR Training with ThingLink

Kyla Ball September 23, 2024

Mitsubishi Electric was founded over a century ago and now has offices around the world. The first Mitsubishi Electric UK (MEUK) office opened in 1969 and since then the company has been at the forefront of developing innovative products and solutions for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).

ThingLink spoke to Steve Clark, Technical Trainer in the MEUK Living Environment Systems Division to hear how ThingLink VR training solutions are innovating their training delivery across the UK. Training at MEUK is now more cost-effective, time-efficient and engaging for both new and established employees, as well as external partners and customers.

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The Context

Traditionally all MEUK training had been delivered in person at the company’s two main training centers. During the pandemic period, training moved entirely online, and since then, the company has adopted a blended approach to training. Recently, MEUK had started to incorporate Virtual Reality as part of the online learning experience but was looking to expand the provision.

The volume of training content and courses at MEUK is high. As a rough guide, in 2023 over 3,600 people (both internal staff and external customers) attended online courses for just one of the many products that MEUK supplies.

The challenges

The biggest challenge that the training team faced was ensuring that the online product training was immersive and engaging enough for employees to enjoy the experience. Online training can often be repetitive and lacking in interactivity, resulting in trainees losing focus and failing to reach the desired learning outcomes, or retain the information learnt in the session.
A secondary challenge was the availability of training staff. At MEUK, new starters join at various points throughout the year. It’s not always practical to have them wait for trainers to become available, many of whom are regularly engaged in training external customers as well as internal staff.
Logistics created another training challenge. MEUK has offices all over the UK, but until recently, only two training centres. This meant new starters often had to travel to their nearest training centre which for some, meant overnight stays were required, as well as long-distance travel.

MEUK hoped to find a training solution that improved learning outcomes by making training more enjoyable overall, with the intention that this would result in better retention of the knowledge and skills. The solution had to be cost effective in both the production and delivery phases, as well as environmentally sustainable for the business in terms of travel time.

They turned to ThingLink as a solution for creating VR content in-house that would meet all these criteria.

VR creation: easy and straightforward with ThingLink

Immersive, photospheric images and videos of the products and training environments were created using a 360 camera, uploaded to ThingLink and annotated with video, voiceovers, images and graphics for trainees to explore and interact with. The majority of the VR content was newly created, although the team have also been able to re-use some original content previously incorporated in online training.

MEUK’s Technical Trainer Steve Clark found that the design and production of the ThingLink VR training content was extremely simple to master, despite being completely new to the platform.

“Hand on heart – ThingLink has been a joy to work with as it’s so straightforward to figure out.”
Steve Clark, Technical Trainer, MEUK

This resulted in the initial courses being produced and delivered quickly and efficiently. The fact that all the VR content could be created, edited and updated in-house meant that this was a very economical and time-effective approach.

A still from one of the 360 tutorials on MEUK’s ecodan domestic heat pump system

Delivery

The ThingLink VR training is generally delivered via Meta Quest3 headsets. Although the training team is on hand to deal with any questions, they have found that trainees using the online content are often self-sufficient and rarely need help in using the training material or headsets.

“Both the Meta Quest 3 Headset and ThingLink have been easy to use.”
Steve Clark, Technical Trainer, MEUK

The training content created so far is designed for use both by both new starters and external customers, with most of the courses being delivered over a number of sessions. In time, all courses will gradually be re-created as VR content with ThingLink.

Results, Feedback and Benefits

Increased engagement

There has been an immediate, positive response to the VR training that has been delivered so far:

“It’s made the learning experience more immersive and fun – most people who try it really enjoy it.”
Steve Clark, Technical Trainer, MEUK

Some feedback responses from trainees include:

“The training makes me wants to learn more and more.”

“I always learn more when being shown what is being talked about especially processes like using the main controller so thought this really helped. “

High customer satisfaction and broadened appeal

In post-course feedback, 99% of attendees would recommend the new format courses.

The MEUK training team believes that the ThingLink VR solution is helping to gamify engineering and their training courses, helping the company and the HVAC industry overall broaden their appeal to engineers of the future, as well as existing and potential customers and partners. This in turn helps with the company’s recruitment and marketing efforts as they can clearly demonstrate their position at the leading edge of both industry innovations and learning and development approaches.

Cumulative cost savings and sustainability

The total number of viewers for MEUK’s training content is considerable, meaning that the potential cost savings are significant – and will only accumulate each year that the training is used. If the training team succeeds in developing VR content for all product courses, they expect over 5,000 people to use the content each year.

During the initial VR training rollout, the company has already started saving on travel and accommodation costs for internal staff alone.

Cost and sustainability comparison of new blended learning delivery vs. traditional in-person training (2024 vs. 2023):

A comparison of the training consumables and catering costs alone between the years 2023 (when training was delivered in person) and 2024 (when training was delivered by blended learning, using a combination of VR and online training) shows significant cost savings for MEUK.

Reduction of 1,202,760 printed paper sheets (130 sheets per Ecodan course attendee) at 8p per sheet of paper = £96,220

Reduced use of plastic folders by 9,252 at £2.50 per folder: saved £23,130

Cost savings in catering at £10 per head: saved £92,520

Total savings £220,970

In addition, MEUK estimate that 462,600 travel miles were saved (based on a 50 mile round trip to training centre per attendee.)

Like most companies, MEUK are actively looking to significantly reduce their carbon footprint across all aspects of their business, so the resulting reduction in Carbon Footprint that the VR training can deliver is viewed as a significant advantage over previous training methods.

Accessibility and versatility

The availability of the VR content now means that new starters are able to access courses without having to wait for a trainer to become available. Decreasing or completely eliminating the lag between a new engineer/technician joining the company and their being fully trained, compliant, and able to operate at full capacity, delivers a clear financial and logistical benefit to the company.

Additionally, as well as using the ThingLink VR training via the MetaQuest headset, MEUK appreciate ThingLink’s versatility in providing for alternative delivery methods and platforms using VR:

“The great thing about the VR content on ThingLink is that it doesn’t HAVE to be viewed through a VR headset. Those who prefer a computer or simply don’t have a VR headset, can still appreciate this content.”
Steve Clark, Technical Trainer, MEUK

This means that in a situation where VR headsets weren’t available for any reason, the training could still be accessed remotely – via laptop tablet or any mobile device.

Joining up global training content

Given the success of the ThingLink VR training to date, the MEUK team has received requests from other training teams throughout the business from across the globe looking for guidance on how to create similar learning and development content. Joined-up and streamlined training across global locations will bring further benefits in terms of time- and cost-savings.

FAQs

What is the difference between VR and XR Training?

XR or Extended Reality, sometimes referred to as Mixed Reality, is an umbrella term that incorporates VR and AR. AR or Augmented Reality, creates an overlay of information on a real environment or object.

Where else can XR Training and Immersive Experiences be used?

XR technology is increasingly being used to provide interactive simulations and other training solutions that are safer and more cost effective when compared to traditional training programs and delivery methods. With immersive technologies, learners can practice real-world skills in this risk-free, simulated environment. This is especially valuable in high-risk work situations such as emergency healthcare, but can equally be used to rehearse and perfect soft skills. However with immersive XR training modules, trainers are also able to give real-time feedback to learners if required, either in person or in the virtual environment.