Design and Evaluation of a VR Training Simulation for Pump Maintenance

TLDR

Virtual reality is increasingly adopted for workforce training, especially for rare, dangerous, or costly scenarios that are hard to replicate in reality. This study seeks to understand the potentials and limitations of VR training and establish best practices by describing a pump‑maintenance VR scenario and its design considerations. We developed a VR simulation for Grundfos pump maintenance, evaluated it with 36 participants against pairwise and video training, and analyzed design factors. While VR training effectively teaches the maintenance procedure, hands‑on traditional methods still produce significantly better outcomes.

Abstract

Through technological advancements more and more companies consider virtual reality (VR) for training of their workforce, in particular for situations that occur rarely, are dangerous, expensive, or very difficult to recreate in the real world. This creates the need for understanding the potentials and limitations of VR training and establish best practices. In pursuit of this, we have developed a VR Training simulation for a use case at Grundfos, in which apprentices learn a sequential maintenance task. We evaluated this simulation in a user study with 36 participants, comparing it to two traditional forms of training (Pairwise Training and Video Training). This case study describes the developed virtual training scenario and discusses design considerations for such VR simulations. The results of our evaluation support that, while VR Training is effective in teaching the procedure for a maintenance task, traditional approaches with hands-on experience still lead to a significantly better outcome.