Remote Assist – how may I help you?

During COVID-19, Arla has accelerated the innovation journey at its dairies and created be-spoke award winning digital solutions. Remote Assist integrates already existing augmented reality with Microsoft Teams for on-the-spot troubleshooting and support.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the health and safety of Arla’s employees around the world have been a top priority for the European dairy cooperative. Therefore, all dairies have been closed to external visitors – including consultants. But the dairies have still needed technical support to keep the lines operating at a high efficiency to meet the spike in consumer demand for dairy products during the pandemic.

To solve this problem, Arla has worked with Microsoft to create award winning bespoke solutions called Remote Assist that builds on existing augmented reality technology.

“Necessity is the mother of invention and the global pandemic has accelerated our journey to connect digitally with experts in a faster way. During this crucial time we had to find alternative ways of getting the support we needed without risking the health and safety of our employees. Getting in contact with the right expert in a critical situation can save millions of Euros, and being able to respond to the situation fast is absolute key to keep our dairies running smoothly,” says David Boulanger, Executive Vice President of Arla’s Supply Chain.

How it works

The new bespoke digital solution integrates already existing augmented reality with Microsoft Teams making it possible to set up meetings directly from devises such as the HoloLens or a regular smart phone. From here, any on-site Arla employee can share their view of what they need assistance for with off-site consultants. Not only can the off-site consult-ant see what is going on at the site, they can also guide the Arla employee by using pointers, pulling up blueprints and drawing real-time, using augmented reality to help fix the problem as quickly as possible. It is also possible reach out to more participants on the same call if necessary.

Remote Assist is already implemented at multiple sites such as Esbjerg, Nr. Vium in Denmark, Aylesbury and Settle in the UK and in Bahrain. Arla expects yearly savings of around Euro 25.000 per site and is in the process of implementing the solution at more dairies.

“I am very pleased with the implementation of this solution. I have personally visited our dairy site in Bahrain and the Settle dairy in the UK virtually while travel was restricted. I look very much forward to us continuing to use this award winning technology as a supplement to physical support at our sites,” says David Boulanger.

Arla has been awarded with the empowering employees award together with its partners from NNIT at the Microsoft Partner Awards 2021.