Mars Wrigley: The Multi-Million Dollar Impact of VR Training

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Josh McCrary:
Yes.

Brad Scoggin:
I’d love to just jump straight in and maybe tell us a little bit about what was it that got Mars Wrigley first, involved in VR technology?

Josh McCrary:
Back in 2019, we really didn’t have the need back then, but we were just curious about what we could do with VR. We. I wasn’t part of the initial team that kind of looked into VR. But there was a team that looked just for safety, training kind of purposes. Just to kind of see what we could do was very small sim, very small scale. That was when we first, kind of dabbled our foot into the VR, XR waters. Then fast forward a few years until we really went full force ahead, with our VR trailblazing. And to 2022 is where we really made the decision that VR was something we could really use to build capabilities at a high speed, manufacturing facility. Like we are.

Brad Scoggin:
And what problems specifically were you aiming to solve?

Josh McCrary:
So coming out of Covid, many manufacturing, companies had a similar issues, staffing being one. Consumer demand shot up, but a lot faster than we anticipated as a business. Our case still rate which is basically can we supply what the customer demands. It was at an all time low. We aim to be around 98% there we were in the 60s, mid 60 range as a gum business.

And we are the largest gum factory in North America. So, we were in jeopardy of losing some of our top customers being Walmart. And that’s a big deal with a company of this size. So we had to make a decision. We had to we had to do something outside the box. We had to onboard several hundred people over a short amount of time.

There went a stretch of ten years where we only hired 80 to 100 people over ten years. We’re talking about onboarding 200 machine operators all run the same equipment in a 6 to 7 month period. So we’re talking about classes or groups of coming in 50 at a time. And that was unheard of in the business. So we needed a way to upskill people at a faster rate because our case fill rate was so low. We had to keep as many trainers running the equipment that we had, because we couldn’t afford to shut down equipment.

We can’t afford to continue to drop on our case rate. We needed to come up with an idea. How can we upskill these people off the floor as much as possible? That way, we can kind of start to cut into the training time that it takes on the floor, and also cut into the time that they spend one on one training with actual on the job training, where we call them here in the business. So that’s where the VR kind of entered the conversation. So myself and a few other, associates. We started thinking about how we could make this work with VR. We started contacting some companies. Futurus was one that we had worked with on the first project, so it made sense to, reach back out to them. And, and it was great to us. So we started building in 2022. We made a decision, we think we could train classroom trainings up to ten people at the time off the floor, not shutting down equipment, keeping our equipment running as much as possible. So that’s where the decision was made. And the building began to happen.

Brad Scoggin:
And just to be clear, I think what you shared ahead of time is that the reduction in training was from 8 to 12 weeks. Down to six weeks. Is that right, Lauren?

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. Before our training plan would be that a new, associate would be hired. They come in and they’d spend time with an OJT from anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks, one on one. But when you’re only onboarding 80 people in ten years, you can do that one-on-one type training for a long period of time. And, you know, the business is sustained. But before the pandemic, our average tenure of our associates was about 20 something years. And since the pandemic, the average tenure of our associates is about six years right now because we just had such a high turnover for, during that time. So when we onboarded, Josh mentioned, you know, we onboarded over 400 people in one year and 200 of them were in our stick packaging area, which is the area that Josh is the training coordinator over.

So this was a huge problem with how do we onboard this many people at the same time? If you’ve ever been on a manufacturing floor, it is very, very loud. And how do you have people ask questions? And everybody look at these small pieces of this machine that you’re running when you’re trying to look over somebody’s shoulder, and the machine’s not stopping for you to look at it.

There is an operator there running it because we have to get cases out the door to get that Kaysville rate up. So it was a really big issue.

Will Stackable:
So fascinating. So you’re moving in this world where it’s a 12 week training process. It’s. I’m guessing OJT is on-the-job training. I should know that, but. Okay. So somebody is there with you on this very noisy line teaching you hands on one on one. All of a sudden, overnight, you have this massive influx of new employees to train.

Will Stackable:
What are they actually doing in VR when they put that headset on? How are you? How are you moving the train? That was that 1 to 1 model to a VR classroom, I guess with a dozen or more employees going through it at the same time.

Josh McCrary:
You know, it’s really about just knowledge. Knowledge and being comfortable. Like Lauren said, it’s loud on the floor. You can’t hear. There’s no way you could train ten people at a time. Everybody’s line of sight would be interrupted. Only certain people would be able to see. Within the VR, you’re able to give everybody that ideal training site.

If you’re wanting to learn about a piece of equipment on the line, they can walk up and look at it. You eliminate the safety hazards with it. It’s it gives them a little more. Wouldn’t the pass to a train a lot was just a handbook. You go through, read a book, it’s more interactive. It’s more engaging, you know, for a fact.

Because we can actually watch with the iPad, companion app. You can see where they’re actually visually looking and make sure they understand things. So that’s how we started to reduce the, the learning curve is by preparing them as much as possible off the floor before they go on the floor. You could have one trainer lead a session for ten people off the floor.

For two, maybe two hours worth of VR training could save a week worth of training that you have to do on the floor.

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. So we call it our familiarization sim. So every associate that’s going to be in that area, that’s going to be the first VR that they do. When I onboarded with Mars Wrigley as the training lead, Josh put me through the simulation. It was awesome. And I definitely felt like I learned a lot.

Lauren Rucker:
So basically, we have three larger pieces of machinery that a stick wrapping operators responsible, one that wraps the gum in the foil and stocks it, one that packs it all into the envelope, and one that packs multiple envelopes into a tray so that can be there on the counter waiting for you to buy it. You know, at the store. And so the familiarization app will take and point out our key components that they need to know and make sure that they know the name, the function, and some common HMG error codes. So HMG is just our, screen that basically shows like when an alarm goes off, you know what’s wrong. And so here are some common error codes that you’re going to have in this area. And so by giving them that opportunity to, learn about the equipment at a slower pace, where they can ask questions, where they can, not be as overstimulated by just how loud it is and how minty it is. There’s a strong mint smell, which is delightful, but, you know, we just want to make sure they can learn as well as possible.

Lauren Rucker:
And the VR provides a great environment for that.

Brad Scoggin:
I think that is a very unique challenge that you get to put on. You know, how VR has impacted you is, avoiding the distraction of the mental illness. But it sounds so it sounds like you’re not taking up time on the floor. You’re people are getting through the training. I mean, they’re more focused. They’re getting through the training almost 50% faster. But another stat you’d shared was that the output is also improving. And so the fill rates gone up almost 50%. How are the trainees respond? I mean, are they enjoying the training? Do they do they feel and see the difference, between maybe traditional training?

Josh McCrary:
Yeah. So, we do. I did create, like, a post survey for all the trainees that go through. We’ve got good feedback. They do, like, especially the younger generation. So as we move forward and more and more should apply to this generation, they grew up with a phone in their hand. The seniors just at first were a little, I didn’t really receive it as well. Well, I don’t need the VR stuff. I need my hand with a tool, but as you get them to actually put it on and try it, they’re really blown away by how accurate is and how we can use this as a learning tool. So it’s been it’s been great. We’ve got great feedback. What I have found that’s been very interesting is the ones that really succeed because we have other apps or simulations, we can talk about, that we’ve built on since then. The ones that succeed in VR are kind of succeeding on the floor at a higher rate as well. The ones that get through it. Someone else can they pay attention to, instructions? Can they? And a lot of that has to correlates with how they perform on the floor. Then they listen to direction. Do that. Can they follow instruction?

Can they learn self learn things. And it’s really kind of can they troubleshoot inside of VR. And then applies on the floor. So that’s been an interesting learning to see that the, the ones that have succeeded and done really well and moved through the VR training really quickly, are some of our upper echelon of operators on the actually factory floor?

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. And, Brad, y’all mentioned the Kaysville rate going up, right? And part of that is because with our shortened time and with our associates being able to be off the floor for that training that are on the job, trainers who are who are always our best operators, they can run that machine so well.

It means they are not having to be off the floor or their machine is running at full capacity, full speed, because that machine is running without a trainee with our best operators still. And so we saw a 45% increase in the output of our OJT in that time period. And then an 18% increase for our, like on average for our trainee output compared to when they were on our previous training program.

So Josh can probably speak to a little bit more about what that looks like, but we saw a tremendous increase in our Kaysville race simply by being able to keep our OJT is doing what they do best, and then having them come in and train our associates for the part that we really need them to.

Josh McCrary:
So a lot of that’s attributed to creating the standard and actually applying it to everyone. Because, like Lauren said in the past, you’re 12 weeks with a one individual, one on one trainer. Now, everybody may know a way of doing things, but they’re going to tweak it their own way. So as you start to roll that out over time, you get several of several different ways of training. Now the VR, you have a standard that everybody goes to and sees the same thing. They know what the standards are, they know what’s expected. They know what does this, that. And it’s really seem like that’s helped with this new, wave of operators really have a higher output from the get go.

Will Stackable:
This is fantastic. But this is the perfect setup for VR. One of the questions we often get asked is why VR, right? Could you have done this with a more traditional training method? Could you create a videos to explain it so that your, your, you know, your people could be on the line working and talk about a little bit about why did you decide to use VR and did you look at other traditional methods.

Will Stackable:
Where did you you know, how did you end here?

Josh McCrary:
I would say that it would. I mean, there was always possibilities of doing it other ways, but I don’t think we would have saved what we did. Going out of routes, videos are one thing, but still, I don’t think it’s interactive. I think there are activeness. I think there’s been studies in schools. Even the kids don’t learn through textbooks anymore. That’s just, you look at the world around us as it evolves. YouTube, TikTok, the attention span of kids, these newer generations of workers, it’s not the same. They need that engaging interactive in this, to really for it to soak in. And there’s been some studies with VR and I’ve kind of looked into about the retain ability of training and how much more it helps to be interactive.

Josh McCrary:
So I think that was some of the things we talked about at the beginning. Our company, Mars, is actually on a plan for digital 30, which is by 2030, we want to have digital twins for a lot of our equipment. So with our company leaning into the XR industry, it made sense for us to go ahead and start blazing a trail because I was big on it personally. They had my vote from day one. I’m a gamer, so I had my own VR at home, so I was like, yes, that sounds interesting. It sounds fun. I think we could do a lot of things with it. I think we’re just barely, barely scratching the surface. On the capabilities of VR training.

Lauren Rucker:
And to provide a slightly different perspective when you’re looking at teaching someone. So my former profession as an actual teacher. In the classroom. And when you look at, research around how to teach people. Right. Most people have heard about different learning styles, right? Oh, I’m a visual learner. I’m an auditory learner, things like that. Videos take care of that visual and auditory component. But the, VR also adds in the kinesthetic that I’m actually doing something. My body is moving, I’m holding the controllers. I’m involved even if I’m not touching a machine. And when you look at, like learning retention, if somebody here’s something I think the research is like, they’re like, you know, a month from now, they’re 10% likely to remember it. Right? And if they write it down, then that that increases. And if they, they, they read it, they hear it and they write it down, you know, adds on to it. But where you really see the biggest gains in memory retention, as far as like teaching is when, the trainees are actually doing something. And then the biggest component is when you can then teach it yourself.

Lauren Rucker:
Right? Because you don’t learn something as well as when you have to teach it and explain it to somebody else. So one of the great things that Josh has been doing is we have a lot of production coordinators who are responsible for training their specific team and making sure they get upskilled. And so Josh is upskilling them in the VR, right? Josh, we have 1200 associates at our site. Josh cannot put every single associate, you know, associate through VR and be the only person who knows how to work our VR. That is not sustainable, right? So he got it off the ground and has done such a great job with that. But he’s upskilling our production coordinators, who are then able to teach the VR component of it as well to the new hires who are going to be on that on their team.

And it provides just such a better retention, not only for our production coordinators, but also for our new associates who are coming in. They’re doing it, they’re participating. And then they actually I think that the VR combined with them going out and actually seeing the equipment, we have some really fun pictures that we like to do when we’re presenting out inside the business or things like that.

Lauren Rucker:
Have the side by side of the, our wrapping machine in VR and our wrapping machine in person, and it is so accurate. It is so cool. And Josh has people. Mars Wrigley is a global site or a global company. And so Josh has had people calling from England. We’ve talked to people in Poland. We’re talking to people across the US.

Like, I think one time we had a meeting between Futurus, ourselves, other Mars associates, where we were trying to figure out, okay, what time are we going to meet? Because there are people in Vancouver, Atlanta, Chicago and Germany. This is going to be a fun time zone. You know, it’s just like, really cool to see the way it’s gone out, because we know that this retention can really help, like of retention of associates but also retention of their learning.

And you’re not having to go back and retrain because they’ve forgotten. You know, we want them to train and learn well the first time as much as possible.

Will Stackable:
You know, speaking of retention, you talked a little bit about how this is just a much more engaging way to learn. And I think it’s significant if you’re an employee starting out at a new job, 12 weeks is a long time to go through training, if you can cut that in half. Imagine that makes a huge impact.

Let’s talk a little bit about retention and just what employees have shared about this new type of training.

Josh McCrary:
Speaking of retention, our retention did increase by about around 10%. Since we’ve implemented VR training. So that’s been a bonus. The trainers aspect side of things, they’re getting trainees now that are better prepared. When they get there, the trainees are excited about VR. Once they hear about VR, you can see the look on their faces and the, the, 60, 70% at the factory.

Josh McCrary:
That doesn’t get to go through. We are they’re very jealous of the stick packaging group that when it when are we going through VR? So you can you can kind of feel the excitement, from the ones that do get the experience. It, is definitely brought that excitement back to a training plan. And that’s what we want. We want people to be excited about a new role. We want them to be engaged, want to come to work. Not only retention being an issue, but just attendance was an issue we had. And, and that’s a lot of companies. But if we can get people excited about coming to work or training, that’s the best thing we can do.

And if VR is going to help us do that and I’m all on board for that.

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. And I think it shows, like our associates, that we care about their onboarding experience. That we want them to learn and have an enjoyable training time, and that we’re willing to invest in them. You know, like, we’re not just investing in technology for the sake of technology. I mean, VR is great, and it’s very fun, but that’s not why, you know, we’re not doing it just because VR is fun.

We’re doing it because it’s effective, because it can really impact their training, and because we want to invest in our associates. And that is, I think, invaluable.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah, I totally agree. We talk about that a lot. I think what’s most exciting about what’s happening in VR is not that it’s a new novel technology, but that there’s real, real value at the core of it. And you guys are seeing that firsthand. I would love to hear more about we talked in the opening, a benefit over a seven month period of nearly $20 million. So maybe break that down for us a little bit.

Josh McCrary:
20 million. So how do we get to that? So you take a traditional 12 week training program. You have an OJT paired with a trainee. We have an average of what each machine output would be over that 12 weeks. Typically 30 to 40% lower than just the normal operator without a trainee. So you get that average over 12 weeks. Now we’re cutting that training down to 6 to 8 weeks. Our plan was six weeks. We had a couple of trainees that stretch just for other reasons. So you’ve cut that in half. So we’re able to save a lot there. We save on your percentage run. So we call it teachers as a percentage of how effective our equipment is over a course of a day.

So you’re over the preset average over that six week period. You cut out, then you tie in on top of that that your trainees are coming out 18% higher averages than were in the past. Accumulating all these numbers over 200 trainees over seven months. You can make a lot of savings in the gum industry and a little bit of time. We make a lot of a lot of gum, 1 million sticks a day.

Lauren Rucker:
It can stretch from Miami to Anchorage, Alaska.

Brad Scoggin:
That’s amazing.

Josh McCrary:
Yeah. So it adds up really quick.

Lauren Rucker:
It does. It was an increase in over 200,000 cases of output. So when you look at that, 200,000 cases of output, our distribution team, they know what they have because they’re like, yes, give us all the gum. We cannot make enough gum to our marketing team is always like, oh, you made too much. Great. We’ll sell it. Like, we have that much demand for our product right now that we can’t make too much gum. That does not exist right now for us. And so having that additional 200,000 cases output and you know, with the average output of our associates for the trainees, increasing slightly, you know, and it only gets better the longer they’re on their own, kind of getting into it.

You know, we can’t wait for our associates to be fully ready a year after they start. Right? We need them to be more efficient sooner. And so it’s been really exciting to see how that has impacted that 919 million.

Will Stackable:
Wow! What a what a stat! So, 200,000. Increase in cases in seven months. Yeah. $19 million impact for the business. The question that I’m sure everybody listening right now has is, okay, what’s the relative cost to develop a program like this? It seems like a no brainer if that’s the kind of impact. But could you talk a little bit about. Yeah. What went into the cost of this program and is there an initial outlay. And then it gets cheaper over time. How does how does the economics of that work?

Lauren Rucker:
So for the cost of VR, it depends on what type of VR you’re going to go for, right? You can get VR that’s like off the shelf where a company has already created it, and you have to pay a certain amount each year or buy associate, that sort of thing. But the what we love about what we did with Futurus is there was a fairly substantial, initial cost to this, but one we had a great need for it. We said our plant director at the time that Aaron’s was very supportive of VR and said, hey, we need we can’t afford to not change something, you know? So we had a great business case for it, and we had over 200 associates who are going to be running these three sets of machines. So there was a great business case for it.

It’s not financially wise to choose to make a VR for a piece of equipment that only two people are going to touch, right? That doesn’t it doesn’t make sense. So one of the things that we’ve done is with our, equipment, because all of our, stick packaging machines currently, our Mars, our Wrigley, owned and engineered and manufactured, we did not actually have CAD drawings available to us.

And so, Futurus came out and did 3D scans of all our, of our equipment, which is what they typically have to do with older, equipment that we don’t have access to those drawings for. And they did all the 3D scans, did all of that. So it was initially quite a bit, but as we go on, we own it.

Lauren Rucker:
We don’t have to pay an ongoing fee to access this VR. So the more associates we train through it, the lower and lower the cost per associate is. We also have another site in Yorkville, Illinois that also has our same gum wrapping machines. They wrap sugar gum instead of sugar free. And so they have also been able to piggyback all of that off of that because since the business owns it, hey, y’all have the same equipment.

They had to buy hardware, but they didn’t have to buy the VR simulation because we already owned it, and we could give it to them and say, you don’t have to pay anything. So that adds even more associate that brings that, dollar value down. And we, because Yorkville has seen such, great value with the VR as well.

They have a new line coming in and they’re looking to do VR with it. And we’re also kind of experiencing, okay, how did how did you get this business case? How did you get this approved? It’s a lot of money. And what we gave them suggestions for is, you know, hey, we have 40 of these machines. That’s why it’s a good test case for us.

We have 40 of the exact same pieces of equipment. There aren’t a ton of manufacturing sites that have that. But we have so many sites, in the US and globally that they can say, hey, you know what? We have some of the same equipment that we do at our site in Topeka and our site in Waco, Texas, and we can split the cost across all three sites and combine, you know, train associates in all three places.

And then that is how we can also help drive down that cost per associate. And so depending on whether or not you do a customized VR that you own permanently versus, you know, getting one that’s maybe not customized specifically to you, which a lot of times those are like the safety ones. Josh and I have been talking with, Futurus and Annie quite a bit because they have, we’re looking into how we can do this more with, like, forklift and safety, VR because we have a lot of forklifts, here at our site, and we have a lot of forklifts at all of our sites globally.

And so we think that could be a good test case for us.

Will Stackable:
You know, you teaming up a great. It’s a great question. So we get this question all the time from, customers and from people who listen to the pod. What’s the value of working with an experienced ISV like Futurus? And is there anything specific that they brought to the table where in hindsight, you thought, well, that’s something we just wouldn’t have even considered if we hadn’t worked with somebody who’s, as experience, is there.

Lauren Rucker:
Josh, I know that you worked with Futurus a lot, mostly at the beginning. We have done VR with another company as well as part of a launch to new equipment. It was actually provided by the vendor. And I would say that we did. See, when you’re working with someone who’s new to VR, there’s just a difference in working out some of those spots that come along where you’re like, oh, this isn’t working out.

This isn’t working out. Having it work across a variety of hardware, you know, with with Futuruss or like, hey, we can make this work for Pico headset or Oculus or, you know, you have a little bit more, variety.

Josh McCrary:
being able to schedule meetings weekly, collaborate, work on a confluence work page together to build these programs. Of course, I didn’t know everything in the building of VR, so they offered a lot of advice and based off some of the other Sims they built before for other companies, and offered, there’s a lot of back and forth, about testing the alpha at the beta, making sure we have everything the way it needs to look a lot of testing with actual employees on the floor, getting their feedback as we build it.

So it was a collaborative effort. I think some of the unique things they offered just around the spacing of things, the pop ups within the VR, the controller actions, that I never would have thought of as where it was helpful. As far as building an effective training simulation.

Lauren Rucker:
when we had the customization and that back and forth feedback with Futuruss, I will say, was one of the biggest differences between working with Futuruss and working with a company who is providing VR for the machinery that we had contracted to bring into the site. Is we got to have I mean, every week we are having meetings with Futuruss, giving them feedback.

Lauren Rucker:
They would send us stuff, we would look at it, we test it, send them back feedback. It was that continuous loop. Whereas with, this other company, we were saying, they said, okay, we’re going to build VR. And this is the kind of the simulate we’re going to do familiarization, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.

We’ll have three separate ones. And then I was like, okay, great. And then we didn’t know anything really about it. We maybe had one feedback session and then we got it received it. You know, so I really appreciate being able to give that ongoing feedback to customize it the way exactly what we needed for our business.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah. That’s great to hear. We’ve had a lot of good experience with Futuruss as well. We’ve talked a lot, and most of this time so far about all the benefits. I love to just been a minute or two on some of the challenges of deploying XR in this environment and hopefully, how Arbor helped you solve some of those challenges.

Josh McCrary:
Yeah. Some of the challenges. On the training side of things, is just getting the buy in from the. The senior associates that we want to put through some of the senior new hires that we want to. They’ve never. They’re not even, I guess, tech savvy, to get the buy in to the VR so that even though they push back some once they give in and actually give it a a whirl, they’ve really enjoyed it.

And we’ve got a lot of the better feedback from those people. Challenges with VR training, you’re going to have people that get nauseous. So that was something with the obstacle. Not, I’d say is less than 5% that we’ve had that we’ve had to think of other ways. Fortunately, we developed the companion app, on the iPads where you can follow along on the iPad. So that was basically our solution for that. If you can’t go in the VR because I’m getting nauseous, we’re going to let you go and follow through with the iPad and watch along. Another challenge I would say in the training in was just, skill level. So what skill level do we put somebody after going through a simulation?

We have three skill levels, within our business, one skill level being, you know, nothing of the training at all. To, meaning you have the knowledge to do of the training. What is this task that you now have the knowledge if you’re a level two, a level three means you could perform the task on the floor efficiently.

You actually have the skill. At first we were building a lot of things, trying to get that level three skill with VR. A if they could pass this in the simulation, there are level three. That means they can do it on the floor. That’s not the case. It’s still physical aspect to the job. There’s still a skill validation that has to happen physically on the job.

We have to verify and validate on the floor. But the knowledge level, the level to that’s what you’re you’re after with the VR. If you can move somebody from a one to a new a two and kind of reduce the the training timeline to get from a two to a three, that’s the goal that we’ve kind of figured out at first we were going after at three, trying to get somebody completely up to skill, all with VR.

You can do a good bit, but that final piece we figured out that is there still has to be the on the for validation portion. It just drastically reduces the time to move from a 1 to 3 skill level. Arbor. Yeah, I’ve been tremendous in helping update. We talked about, the continuous updates to back and forth with Futuruss constantly updating from, Alpha to eBay to build to a gold build, which we actually roll out for training these after seeing the other VR platform that we’ve been working with is night and day Difference.

As far as getting up loads, our other VR is you have to have a mega computer to plug them into, hardwire everything in, manually upload things. Yeah, this platform has been a game changer, especially when you have 20 headsets like we do here. If you need to upload a change to a simulation, it makes it seamless. So that’s been I appreciate that.

Lauren Rucker:
Yes. Agreed. Having to have a dedicated computer for each headset, is not ideal. So we love. We love your platform being able to push out, updates. But speaking of pushing up updates, one of the challenges that if you’re considering, you know, bringing VR to your company, to your manufacturing site, what have you is you need to think about your internet and having a separate we actually have a separate, network that our VR headsets and iPads are on because we just have so much technology on the site with all of the iPads and computers and things like that, that you really have to have, considered your internet,

capabilities, and the space. So VR, we love it gives you like a little boundary so that if you walk past that boundary, you are all of a sudden seeing in real life again, so you’re not going to accidentally run into somebody or, whatnot. But you do. Actually, in order to train ten people, you have to have enough space for ten people to physically spread out in a room.

So you do have to consider, some sort of meeting space, classroom space. You know, you’re not really going to be outside, for this. So finding that indoor space that is large enough to host the number of associate you’re trying to do is also an important thing to think about, especially when you’re scheduling. Because if everybody needs the super large room for a big meeting, you know, somebody is going to get priority. So you better book your room early.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah, that’s really good. I think there are some of the logistics and even the change management like you talked about, Josh, that I think sometimes we don’t think about. And they’re just so, so key. This been really, really good. Maybe as we move to a wrap here, just kind of a quick lightning, question, for each of you, maybe one piece of advice. There another company that’s thinking about getting started. What would you what would each of you tell them?

Josh McCrary:
I would say be thorough. List your goals. What is your goal? From the beginning? What are you trying to change? What are you. What skill are you trying to change? Make sure that you can spread the wealth. Like Lawrence talked about earlier. It doesn’t really make sense. The ROI is not big enough on a singular piece of equipment, but if it’s something within a business that you can spread, to multiple sites, or that’s where I think you get the most bang for your buck.

Josh McCrary:
We’ve proven that it is capable of building capabilities. So I think you should just, put in the work and start blazing your trail.

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah, and I think I would probably someone late to. Josh, tell them to really think about their, their case scenario. Like, what is what is their business case for it? What associates are you trying to target? How many of them do you have? How many pieces of equipment or what types of, you know, are you trying to create a simulation because it’s difficult to replicate on a regular basis.

You know, maybe it’s something that only happens once or twice, but when it does happen, it’s a huge deal, right? So really think about the test case scenario. And is it either going to affect a lot of associates or the task that you’re trying to target has, you know, its own financial component to it, right. If this goes wrong, is it going to cost your business a lot of money?

Lauren Rucker:
Right. One of the things, we didn’t mention is in our in our wrapping machine, there’s a high speed section that if that is not properly taken care of, it cost $30,000 to replace. So one of our simulations is on our clean inspection, lubricate parts that they do twice a shift. Right. They clean the machine. They inspect all the parts they lubricate.

If they do not lubricate that high speed section, we are going to be replacing a $30,000 part. So, you know, when you think about the cost of VR versus, hey, let’s make sure we’re trained well and our associates are meeting this, that same standard over and over again that we can reduce the the maintenance costs. Right. So there’s lots of different ways to think about what you’re going to be saving, right, for us in this project it was case output.

We needed our training time to be shorter. We needed that case output. But it also has all these other side benefits as well. When you think about maintenance, reduction because the machines are being, well, more well maintained. So there’s a lot to really consider when you look at that, case scenario. That I would really dive into.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah. That’s so good. Guys, this has been awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I know you’re busy, and I want to. I want to end with what Josh said. I think it’s a perfect fit in the episode. He said put in the work and start blazing your trail. So, look forward to talking to you guys again soon.

Lauren Rucker:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Brad Scoggin:
Man, what a fun, fun interview. To me, it’s just it’s wild. I feel like they didn’t even totally, fully get into it. But all of the kind of the ancillary benefits. When people train faster, there’s just this ripple effect to other parts of the business and productivity increases in a lot of places.

Will Stackable:
It’s true. And one of the things that she talked about, I think. Well, they both talked about that was so interesting to me was just the reality of being an on the job trainer. And you show up to work and all day, you’re basically going to be training somebody, trying to yell on the line when it’s so noisy.

The trainee can’t hardly hear you. And just that’s not a great experience for anybody. And you can imagine going from that to that trainer gets to be on the line doing his job, and then they get to come in where they feel like they had the most value at the very end to, you know, to sign off and to make sure that that trainee is, is ready to go.

And that whole early stage of their learning process, which is so difficult to do all of a sudden, just becomes effortless. And they talked about even that, you know, their initial hypothesis was they were going to be able to get people to a level three. And going through this program, they’ve realized, okay, there is still a role for the person, the trainer.

We can’t get them all the way there, but we can fast forward six weeks and get them there so much faster so that then the trainer can come in and do the high value thing at the end. So to me, just a great example of technology, making people’s lives better, giving them their time back. I know that’s something that we talk about so often, but when we started Arbor, our mission was, how can this technology give us our time back so that we can spend more time with people in the real world and I think VR right now we’re seeing with Mars Wrigley is not taking jobs away.

It’s making it possible for new employees to train faster for the on the job trainers to do their job better, and for everybody to just be productive instead of, you know, wasting their time yelling at each other on the shop floor. So great story. I would love to give them back. And, this is one we’re going to return to, I’m sure.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah, definitely. Well, as always, thanks for spending a little bit of time with us. We appreciate it. Make sure you check us out wherever you listen to podcasts, and we will catch you next time.