Virtual Reality Driven Learning: A Catalyst for Supply Chain Innovation

The development of next generation supply chain leadership is critical for all organizations to maintain a competitive advantage. Our increasingly high-velocity world requires all leaders to make time to learn, develop and share ideas in order to innovate. However, time is one resource we often seem to lack in our 24-7-365 supply chain world. Learning and teaching in Virtual Reality (VR) has now become a reality that can address this challenge!

VR has gained popularity recently for its ability to create detailed, engaging learning experiences. In fact, it’s predicted that VR training will contribute $294 billion to the global economy by 2030. VR training and teaching has been around for a few years and has been very successful for training pilots, medical professionals, and even athletes. These may seem quite disparate fields to apply VR to, but they all require deep focus, engagement, and knowledge retention. While for supply chain leaders, the decisions, and learnings to be had may not be life or death (but can be in some situations!), yet the learning potential that immersive learning experiences offer could change the way we approach supply chain innovation profoundly.

VR now enables supply chain leaders in different continents and countries to come together in break out rooms, with VR white boards that they can write on with VR pens, place VR “Post it” notes on VR posters and create action plans to embed innovation within their organization. The technology is readily accessible to all! In this article I want to outline some of the benefits of this new virtual classroom.

Innovative education for innovative supply chains

Supply chain agility, resilience and innovation have become a priority for many industries in the last few years. We have seen great upheavals that have exposed the vulnerabilities within many supply chains and now we need to explore and exchange new ways to create better supply chain resilience. Whether that means embracing industry 4.0 for greater process efficiency, fostering a culture of continual innovation or structured transformation implementation… they all depend on finding more effective ways to educate supply chain leaders on how to improve their supply chains, embrace change, and be open to the new.

Some of the fundamental areas to consider when putting together training resources for supply chain executives include:

·        Reviewing Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers

·        Good change management

·        Cross-functional involvement

·        Buy in from the top down and bottom up

·        Identifying and leveraging change advocates

·        A commitment to learning and adapting

None of the above priorities are new, but the way they can be approached is. We’ve all reached the point of innovation-information overload and training fatigue and it’s time to try something completely different. In the spirit of innovation within supply chain, we also need to innovate how we improve it and educate ourselves and each other.

Virtual reality: A new way for supply chain leaders to learn and experiment

From my own experiences providing learning programs to executives within supply chain, the theoretical and academic are all well and good but they don’t yield great results alone. Engagement is low, knowledge retention is poor, and in-classroom experiences can be costly with little return on investment. Better to find a solution that is engaging, interactive, and ensures everyone leaves the ‘classroom’ with tangible action points and an applicable approach to innovate their supply chain.

That’s where I value the impact that virtual reality can have on learning. 

5 ways VR supports learning, knowledge retention and engagement

There are a variety of VR experiences available that can help executives network, learn, and engage with the current thought leaders changing the supply chain landscape. As Albert Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience,” and that’s exactly what virtual reality learning experiences offer.

By combining different types of learning methodologies, VR learning can provide the following benefits:

1.      Immersive experiences promote better engagement

Imagine this, you’re an executive who has booked a VR course on supply chain resilience, you received your Meta headset and you’re ready to go. You put it on and you’re no longer in your living room, office, or classroom. You’re in a completely digitally-generated environment with your peers. There is no pen and notepad to doodle on, you can’t check your phone or email, full engagement with your surroundings and the content is your only option, your focus is on the problem at hand, and you can brainstorm ideas with peers on VR white boards with no distractions.

In a study that compared the engagement of different learners in different educational environments, virtual reality learners were four times more focused during training than their online learning peers and one and a half times more focused than their in-classroom colleagues.

2.      Better engagement supports knowledge retention

The full-engagement, immersive nature of VR learning supports better knowledge retention for learners. The extremely visual element of VR combined with experiencing a novelty really does ensure a memorable experience and that learnings are retained more effectively. In a completely simulated and safe environment, you can explore real-life scenarios, complete practical problem-solving exercises, and network with other supply chain executives.

The possibilities to make VR learning environments memorable are endless too. Working with a great design team, you can create content that allows executives to solve complex supply chain problems on the moon, on Mars or even further afield! According to PwC, 35% of people who learn via VR see an improvement over e-learners to act on what they learned after training in VR.

3.      It’s completely flexible, customizable, and adaptable to your learner’s needs

A virtual reality learning environment perfectly lends itself to blended learning models, allowing you to combine online and offline materials in a way that offers the best learning program and experience. VR is not a “magic bullet” for every learning environment, so blending it with Teams or Zoom can further enhance the learning experience.

If your attendees are looking for networking opportunities and to connect and work with other supply chain executives for knowledge share and collaboration, a flipped learning approach would be appropriate. You can provide reading materials ahead of time and allow your attendees the space and room to discuss their thoughts and reactions to it. 

A collaboration between the Australian government and a group of universities, called the BlendSync project, used a virtual reality environment to develop language skills and as a training ground for teachers, capitalizing on the flexibility of how you can structure a seminar in VR.

4.      Collaboration and peer interaction lead to better problem solving

No VR learning course will be the same and there are limitless possibilities when it comes to creating scenarios for VR-learners to work through and collaborate on. This gives supply chain executives an experience they probably don’t get every day, the opportunity to work together with peers who speak their language, share their challenges, and have a diversity of opinions and viewpoints to benefit from.

These VR-enabled interactions allow executives the chance to rub shoulders with people who have the same frustrations as them and can offer tangible support and insight to apply to real life in their roles.

5.      It’s more inclusive than in-person training

VR learning experiences only require a Meta headset to access them. There are no travel requirements, no classrooms to find and sit in, very little equipment to navigate. All of which make VR more accessible to a wider range of people who may have been deterred by getting to and from a classroom for mobility reasons, caring responsibilities, geography and much more.

VR levels the playing field in this sense, removing significant barriers to entry.

What this means for the supply chain sector:

Embracing a new way to deliver learning and development is a big commitment and exercise. But where there are big risks there are big rewards too, and VR is a great way to train some of the most critical learners, executives.

Innovation breeds innovation, so investing in better forms of delivering training will see better transformation outcomes, greater process efficiency, and better supply chain resilience across the board as supply chain executives are given the tools to enact real change in their roles. Competition is no longer between individual organizations but between the supply chains they are part of, VR enables supply chain leaders to come together to create new partnerships and solve our collective supply chain challenges together.

Ready to explore VR-enabled learning opportunities?

For more information about virtual reality learning opportunities designed to help Supply Chain Leaders meeting demand while you innovate, view my upcoming Gemba Masterclass that I will be leading, Adapt VR – Get Agile, Get Resilient and Get Supported.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Grace Hawkins Gemba for supporting me in the production of this article.