Virtual Reality Environments as a Strategy to Improve Processes Productivity

A 3D virtual interactive environment can follow the steps of those old second world war flying simulators and be used as a tool to train people in learning a practical process. This will result in an increase of productivity because people will be able of performing that practical process in less time thanks to the use of Virtual Reality as a technological learning tool. This work presents a statistical analysis of 100 students of the first semester in an engineering bachelor's degree trying to learn a simple and practical task using a 3D virtual interactive environment and the time that it took them to perform the same activity in real life. Those students were divided into different groups of 50 students each. One of those groups trained in a virtual ambience, the second group trained just by observing a qualified employee performing the same task. No student had ever performed the task. The results of this investigation prove statistically that there is nearly a 20% gain in the time that it took for the first group, the ones who used virtual reality, over those who did not use it.