San Antonio, 29th August 2024 – The Augmented Connected Worker (ACW) market is midway through its early adopter phase and experiencing high growth. Frost & Sullivan estimates a 31.1% CAGR from 2023 to 2030, reaching USD 6.36 billion that year across process, hybrid, and discrete manufacturing industries.
The connected worker is a term used to describe technologies (AR, IoT, AI, and more) that help connect frontline workers in manufacturing with the systems they interact with daily. The augmented worker refers to the enhancement in the performance of frontline workers and includes technologies such as AR, exoskeletons, computer vision systems, and more. Although there are many similarities between both and are sometimes used interchangeably, Frost & Sullivan think it is best to use a single term. The ACW is meant to unite both concepts and describe a system that can help connect frontline workers with the tools they need seamlessly to enhance their performance and include them in the continuous improvement cycle of the company.
The ACW industry was born approximately 15 years ago, with several start-ups that aimed to solve specific problems on the shop floor by providing digital tools to frontline workers. Manufacturing facilities started using more point solutions that added complexity to the everyday activities of frontline workers. Due to the demand for a single pane of glass to manage the different systems on the shop floor, many of these start-ups (safety and risk management, learning and upskilling, maintenance-focused productivity, remote collaboration) expanded their functionalities and integration capabilities to become the standard systems on the shop floor. Frost & Sullivan categorizes leading vendors that offer most of these functionalities in a single system as Generalists.
Market Insights
We have analysed a total of 18 end-user industries across process, hybrid, and discrete manufacturing. Hybrid manufacturing industries including Food & Beverage, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Building Materials are among the fastest growing. Discrete industries follow as a close second, led by a high presence of vendors and AR-centric solutions in the Automotive, Aerospace & Defence, and Heavy Equipment industries.
North America leads in market share, holding over 40% of the market and just over half of the total number of identified vendors. Europe is the second largest market with a share of 37.5%. Although no precise statistical analysis was performed, it is reasonable to explain this distribution of the market by observing the depth of the labour crisis faced in each region.
Cutting-Edge Innovations
With a highly heterogeneous market, it is possible to find successful vendors adopting a wide range of differentiation strategies. Besides the trend of creating a Generalist ACW solution to become the single pane of glass on the shop floor, vendors are leveraging their strengths to create and maintain their competitive advantage. Here is a non-exhaustive list of those differentiation points:
- AI-powered copilots to further enhance the user experience with the platform.
- Advanced analytics capabilities with AI-powered tools for democratizing access to information.
- Leveraging AR to enable no-QR access to equipment data, navigation guidance, and/or automatic step-checks.
- Combining skills management with intelligent scheduling to optimize production planning.
To learn more about the ACW market, click here.
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