Background
In early 2021, Epiroc needed to launch its new underground drilling machine, the Boomer M20, under pandemic-era travel restrictions that made customer visits impossible. Working with Swedish VR platform provider Flowtropolis, the company built a shared multi-user VR environment in which customers from different countries could step into the same virtual space simultaneously, walk around the machine at full scale, and inspect its internals — including removing panels that would be difficult or impossible to access on a real rig in the field.
From product launch to platform programme
The Boomer M20 launch succeeded in reaching global markets without physical access to the machine. Epiroc's teams then turned to a broader question: where else does this approach apply? Over the following years, the same Flowtropolis platform and workflows became the foundation for operator training, internal design reviews, safety onboarding, and product development collaboration. By 2026, Epiroc had built more than 20 VR applications on Flowtropolis — spanning customer-facing product launches, technical maintenance training, remote design collaboration, and safety induction.
The platform approach
Epiroc chose to standardise on a single platform rather than commission separate XR projects per use case. Flowtropolis provided shared infrastructure: consistent interaction patterns, governance tooling, user management, and deployment workflows that each new application could build on rather than starting from scratch. This significantly reduced the cost per subsequent application and allowed Epiroc's own teams to build and update content in-house, reducing dependency on external studios.
Use cases in production
The deployment now covers several distinct workflows across the business:
- Operator training before machines reach site, with consistent VR setups across global locations ensuring quality is not dependent on a single instructor or physical machine availability.
- Product launches and customer demos that can be run globally without shipping equipment, with product experts joining live from other locations.
- Design and development collaboration, with distributed teams meeting around the same 3D assets earlier in the development cycle to improve alignment and reduce iteration time.
- Remote expert involvement in sessions where the right person cannot be in the right place physically.
Outcomes
XR has become a recurring operational capability at Epiroc rather than a series of isolated projects. Internal ownership of content and workflows — enabled by Flowtropolis's self-serve tooling — is described as the key factor in sustaining the programme beyond the pilot stage and scaling it across teams and geographies.
