In 2014, ProGlove emerged the third-place winner in Intel’s “Make It Wearable Challenge”. The ProGlove team of four who had met at the Technical University of Munich in Bavaria, Germany, had submitted the idea of a “smart glove,” which was a barcode scanner, motion detector, and RFID reader connected to the back of an industrial-grade work glove for use in high volume manufacturing. The idea was based on observations of BMW’s assembly lines, where each item had to be scanned before being assembled. The process involved finding a scanner, picking it up, scanning the component, and then putting away the scanner again. A smart glove could achieve this more quickly and ergonomically, optimising worker productivity and allowing extra steps in quality control to be included in the production.
The team eventually walked away with US$250,000 prize money from the competition. A visit to the Consumer Electronics Show in the US in early 2015 made them realised there was interest in their product not only from manufacturing companies but also from the logistics and service industries. The company grew, developing a sturdy and easy-to-use smart glove with bar code scanning capabilities. Customers eagerly adopted the new glove, benefitting from the combined improvements in speed, quality and ergonomics for a relatively low up-front cost for just the scanner and glove.
In 2018, the new CEO, Andreas Königs, brought the company’s focus back to the software side, and launched the new “ProGlove Insight” in March 2021. ProGlove Insight combined hardware with software that was capable of analysing the glove’s data and making it available to the management for advanced analytics and decision-making.
The case introduces Industry 4.0 concepts and shows how digital innovation can have an impact on time and quality in production and service lines as well as worker and customer satisfaction. Students will discuss how ProGlove identified the potential for digitalisation and how its smart gloves improve speed, quality and ergonomics in various industries. Instructors will find this case suitable for teaching undergraduate and postgraduate operations management courses on digital transformation.
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