Virtual Reality Training Tours

Fonterra and Beca have partnered to develop a breakthrough virtual reality (VR) training. The solution allows trainees to navigate the co-operative’s manufacturing and distribution sites without the need to set foot on site.

Trainees are given site / location specific training and have their knowledge assessed and recorded during the training tours. This technology improves knowledge retention and will help substantially reduce onboarding times.

Beca has created an immersive and realistic training environment that is effective, quick to produce, cheap to deploy, safe for the user and entirely customisable to meet Fonterra's training objectives.

The new technology will place Fonterra at the forefront of global training innovation and is part of a business wide commitment to become a world leader in risk mitigation.

How does it work?

• We utilise reality capture techniques to create a photo realistic point-to-point ‘walkthrough’ which is completed in a VR environment. Trainees are able to move through the scenario between pre- determined locations. At each location in the VR training walk, the trainees have the ability to look around to familiarise themselves with their environment.
• The trainees are asked to identify features of importance and perform various ‘interactions’ that have been overlaid on the scenes. The interactions are focused on training and assessing their understanding in four key areas: health and safety, food safety and quality, asset management and sustainability.
• The entire training tour is completed using a gaze analysis interface which is intuitive and hands free.
• Comprehensive data is collected during each training walkthrough and this data is automatically sent to a central location for analysis by Fonterra to access the competence of trainees and to allow systematic improvement of training over time.  
• The VR training is easily deployed to a wide audience as a smart phone application. Trainees download the application and can use an extremely low cost VR viewer (such as a Google cardboard) to generate the VR training environment.
• This technology is expected to replace ‘in person’ training tours at Fonterra following a successful pilot. Training can be tailored to each of Fonterra’s sites and tested through the completion of modules. 
• Using VR is ultimately a safer learning environment and enables a strong familiarisation of sites for Fonterra employees.