Assisted reality helps Wayne Farms provide remote support

Wayne Farms will use assisted reality to enable remote viewing and collaboration for a range of troubleshooting – from animal welfare practices to product development and processing.

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The head-mounted smart glasses can provide real-time, high-quality video and audio insights to staff members, customers, suppliers and anyone else that needs remote collaboration throughout the world. (Wayne Farms)
The head-mounted smart glasses can provide real-time, high-quality video and audio insights to staff members, customers, suppliers and anyone else that needs remote collaboration throughout the world. (Wayne Farms)

Wayne Farms will use assisted reality to enable remote viewing and collaboration for a range of troubleshooting – from animal welfare practices to product development and processing.

“This is a resource that is currently available and it can be used for multiple applications,” Juan DeVillena, director of quality assurance and food safety, Wayne Farms, said. “We found that this was an alternative that we could offer to customers who aren’t able to travel.”

Real-time video and audio support

The head-mounted smart glasses can provide real-time, high-quality video and audio insights to staff members, customers, suppliers and anyone else that needs remote collaboration throughout the world.

This means that equipment breakdowns and processing issues can be inspected and assessed immediately, saving the travel time required by off-site technicians and reducing the number of physical visits to farms, plants and other facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of DeVillena’s favorite features of the smart glasses is the flexibility it offers. The assisted reality technology can capture video or mark up images when problems are found in real time, is adjustable up or down to give viewers a better look at issues on the floor or ceiling and features a flashlight to illuminate objects for a closer look.

Once you use it, you start realizing that the reach of the glasses provides a very powerful tool,” he added.

The possibilities are endless

Wayne Farms has already used assisted reality to conduct virtual customer audits, farm tours and production orientation sessions and enable customer collaboration and product development, oversight, quality control and compliance management, vendor and supplier management and collaboration and equipment maintenance, troubleshooting and installation.

The company also uses the smart glasses for training purposes. For example, if the birds at one house exhibit a welfare or health concern, the technology can be used to show workers in other houses how symptoms manifest.

“Every time we use them, we think of a new possible use,” DeVillena concluded. “Once you start using it, you start discovering that there’s other needs.”

In 2020, Wayne Farms produced 48.8 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Companies Database. It ranks as the seventh largest poultry company in the United States and the 19th largest poultry company in the world.

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