SMEs are making XR workable in the workplace

XR Innovation fund

For many SMEs in Limburg, the challenge lay not in recognising the potential of XR, but in actually applying it in their day-to-day operations. Extended Reality was often already familiar through demos, training courses or isolated experiments, but the step towards concrete applications on the shop floor proved to be a significant one for many companies. This was partly due to limited time, resources and in-house expertise. This is precisely why the XR Innovation Fund was set up by POM Limburg and the Province of Limburg: to help Limburg companies, in collaboration with knowledge institutions, translate XR into real products, processes and services that deliver practical added value. 

Limburg SMEs facing the same challenges

This shared challenge also brought together a broad group of Limburg-based SMEs in the fund, including Lednlux, Rovixus, The Data Forest, EAZER Maintenance/ABN Cleanroom Technology, Toster, Bimefy and Recovery Grid. Although they operate in diverse sectors such as industry, construction, healthcare and digital services, they share a similar need: to translate innovative technology more quickly into practical applications that genuinely help employees, customers or operational processes. The XR Innovation Fund was specifically designed to accelerate this translation and strengthen the innovation and competitive strength of Limburg’s SMEs.

Digital Future Lab

Within this context, the Digital Future Lab (DFL) at Flanders Make@UHasselt played a central role as a knowledge partner. DFL combined expertise in augmented reality, virtual reality, digital twins and artificial intelligence with practical questions from the field. Working closely with the participating companies, solutions were developed that do not remain confined to the lab, but can be deployed immediately on the shop floor. In this way, DFL helped to translate research potential into operational reality for companies that would have found it more difficult to take that step on their own.

The projects themselves demonstrate the wide range of practical applications for XR. These included hybrid virtual twins for robot control, AR dashboards displaying operational data, XR applications in the design of lighting plans, virtual training environments for the use of surgical robots, and digital site monitoring in the construction sector. In each project, DFL worked as a technical sparring partner, shoulder to shoulder with SMEs, to build solutions for specific operational challenges. This hands-on approach to collaboration proved to be a powerful formula for bringing advanced technology from concept to the shop floor.

Moreover, the added value of this approach extends beyond individual projects. Each collaboration builds up additional XR and AI expertise within the participating companies, provides teams with tools they can use to continue their work independently, and delivers validated use cases that also lower the barrier to adoption for other companies. Together, the projects thus function as a regional demonstration programme showcasing what is possible when knowledge institutions and companies pool their expertise.

XR as leverage

For Flanders Make, this case study illustrates what the Digital Future Lab stands for: approaching XR not as technology for technology’s sake, but as a practical tool for making processes smarter, better supporting staff and bringing innovation into practice more quickly. Through cross-fertilisation between businesses and knowledge institutions, XR becomes not only conceivable, but also workable.