Kia Georgia's plant in West Point, Georgia is the carmaker's only U.S. manufacturing site, building the Telluride, Sorento, Sportage, EV6 and EV9 across three shifts. Its assembly line demands speed, precision and repetition, and a new hire may have to learn dozens of steps and perform them in sync with a fast-moving line from day one — a transition that leaves little room for error or on-the-line learning.
To close that gap, researchers at Georgia Tech's H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) partnered with Kia Georgia to build a gamified virtual reality training platform for the plant's door assembly line, one of the many stations workers must master before starting on the floor. The project began in 2025 and brought together Kia Georgia, Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM), Georgia Quick Start — the state workforce training program run through the Technical College System of Georgia — and Spelman College.
How the training works
The platform follows an apprenticeship-inspired progression through a series of progressively challenging stages. Trainees first watch an expert perform each task through the system's "ghost hands," then mirror those actions with support from audio prompts and other on-screen cues. As proficiency grows, the scaffolding gradually fades until the trainee performs the task independently.
Its main advantage over conventional training is that it reproduces the movement and pace of an active assembly line — conditions that are difficult and costly to recreate off the factory floor. Kia already ran hands-on training through Georgia Quick Start, but certain aspects of the live production environment could not be replicated there.
The research team, led by Mohsen Moghaddam, grounded the design in site visits, demonstrations and conversations with operators and trainers at the plant.
Status
The team recently delivered a beta version and demonstrated it to Kia Georgia leadership, including president and CEO Stuart Countess. The current build covers a single door assembly station; discussions are underway to extend the technology to additional stations within the plant.
