The Challenge
VR Training Companies Get into the Warehousing Game
Warehouse VR training is here. A Fortune 10 retailer needed a learning experience to boost workforce performance, and Roundtable knew that VR training companies were ripe for integration into warehouse processes and the supply chain.
The job position was for picker-packers. It involved unpacking and then repacking a lot of consumer goods and doing so quickly. Operational efficiency was vital: the retail industry and supply chain management are volume operations. Roundtable knew that virtual reality training, and the opportunity to scale VR, could provide the answer and help with warehouse management.
Immersive Technologies and Warehouse VR — and What Does “Decant” Mean?
Roundtable knew we had to use the right training methods to get them the right training experiences. It couldn’t be just a quick, self paced, online course. They needed new hires to get the look, feel, sound and physical movement of working in the volume industry that is warehouse management and logistics. In addition, the company had to manage a launch of its own: Roundtable had to integrate the client’s newly rolled-out process for a warehouse “decanting” station.
decant: (verb)
to pour out, transfer, or unload
The pickers and packers in the warehouse were stationed at worktables where they’d open boxes of goods and properly sort them into totes. A surprising amount of detail, critical thinking, spatial awareness and much more goes into the job.
Our client wanted to create an immersive learning experience where workers could develop skills quickly, learn the particulars of layered and complex sub-tasks, and train on the equipment and materials they’d be using.
Virtual environments work well for industrial and commercial settings because they mitigate safety concerns. This is one of many benefits of VR and Roundtable Learning–the learning-focused choice among VR training companies–knew that warehouse safety also had to be integrated into the program.
Spatial awareness was particularly important: decanters had to ensure each tote was at least 70% full. Every inch of space matters when you’re stacking totes into a diesel tractor trailer that costs at least 69 cents per mile!
Client’s Concerns and Pain Points:
- Speeding up the processing of goods
- Lowering turnover (previously exceeded 49% warehouse standard)
- Enhancing spatial awareness and critical thinking for 70% tote fill rate
- Automating teaching, verification, measurement, and ranking
- Making learning engaging without over-gamification
Roundtable's Solution
We created an immersive learning experience where trainees can now rehearse and practice decant tasks in a safe environment. The VR training tests learners on the end-to-end process of correctly unloading, sorting and packing a complex variety of consumer goods.
There are six additional essential tasks branched off from the normal process. These included entering a new product’s SKU into the system and operating a $21,000 finely-calibrated, infrared-light-guided scale!
Employees Learn The New System and Practice Procedures
The new logistics system that the company was introducing focused hard on precise digital tracking of everything involved in the decanting process: tracking of the totes, knowing which workstation they were packed at, and who packed them. It wasn’t something that just any VR training company could do.
As mentioned, the other program-wide focus of this training was encouraging a vigilant sense of spatial awareness and critical thinking when it came to packing. The client wanted to ensure the totes were at least 70% full.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Transfer consumer goods from boxes into warehouse totes efficiently.
- Use touch-screen monitors and other digital tools.
- Complete tasks like bagging liquids, entering SKUs (Stock Keeping Units/barcodes), and weighing items on a $21,000 Cubiscan scale.
- Fill each tote to 70% capacity within six minutes.
- Sort chemical-class products/materials (e.g., detergents) from regular items (e.g., snack foods)
- Use a handheld barcode scanner to track products, totes, and workstations.
- Apply motor skills for lifting totes, spin-offs, and boxes.
👉 Precise location and precise inventory levels are still possible in the volume business of consumer retail, and that’s one way that Fortune 10s stay Fortune 10s.
All of this knowledge and expertise is packed into an interactive, gamified set of two 20-minute modules. At scale, this bold approach of concentrated training, evaluation and re-training was positioned to greatly reduce turnover for this position.
Basic Elements of the Content
What Does the Training Look Like?
The VR training immerses learners in a realistic warehouse environment using Pico 4E VR headsets. At the decant workstation, learners are guided through essential procedures with floating hands that mirror their movements, including loading, unloading, and handling exceptions. The experience enhances learning by allowing learners to practice procedures and refine their skills through repetition. Multi-sensory prompts—including on-screen text, audio narration, and visual progress scales—enhance procedural accuracy. A timed decanting module with a floating countdown helps build efficiency under pressure.
Key Features:
Mercury XRS measures learner movements, time spent, and efficiency. The data is indexed, ranked, and shared with supervisors, reducing management labor.
Learners use controllers to mimic natural movements, like rotating them to pack totes or lifting virtual boxes to eye level.
Trainees use handheld controllers to sign in on a simulated touch-screen monitor and confirm instructions by clicking prompts
The Pico 4E VR headset, built for business use, offers a 90Hz refresh rate and 1200 pixels per inch—nearly 3x sharper than the iPhone 15 Pro.
The virtual workspace accurately simulates filling totes to specific capacity, helping learners practice efficient packing.
The training design ensures learners can see by percentile how full each tote is, down to millimeter precision.
The Results
Turnover Drastically Reduced
Reducing the training time needed for new hires can create a compound effect on employees by reducing manager turnover. And according to Gallup, 9% of workers leaving a job said that staffing/workload/scheduling changes could have changed their minds.
However, the client’s feedback specifically about the decanter position is more impressive. They relayed to Roundtable that because off this training they reduced the turnover rate by 70% for the team in this decanter position.
Roundtable, the Premium in VR Training Companies, Frees Up 7,800 Hours of Management Labor
Roundtable Learning’s client made a future-focused investment in training development. VR training now comprises the bulk of their preparation for the decant process. Their warehouse managers and trainers have a significantly reduced training workload.
Roundtable freed up 7,800 management-level work hours for the company by offloading the bulk of training to two solo session in VR; Based on a survey of the mean hourly wage for Warehouse Trainers)
How much of the workload did we reduce? Our research team surveyed job board salaries for warehouse trainers. They then compiled other premium workplace data on the warehouse labor sector. Through this, they rendered an hourly wage figure and calculated that this client’s investment in professional development has freed up 7,800 management-level work hours from their pipeline.
In a Volume Industry Like Warehousing, Roundtable Turned It Up
This Fortune 10 client has rolled out Roundtable Learning’s VR technology training solution for all its decant-station warehouses in North America. Through our collaboration-centered, interactive, on-site-involved, learning-specialist-designed programs, we delivered. Whatever your business volume is, we can turn the volume up. Contact us for a chat today!
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