Jonalex Herrera told more than 40 automotive directors in March 2023 that virtual and augmented reality could take the risk and the cost out of industrial training and inspection.
The occasion was the fourth directors meeting of the Querétaro Automotive Cluster, where he and Liz Pasillas represented New Discovery and where he shared the platform with Víctor Corella of AMN Quality Solutions. The agency's account of the meeting records the talk. The framing was operational improvement, not creative experiment.
Immersive training was tied to retention, inspection quality and the shortage of people.
First, that immersive training helps teams retain procedures better than static instruction alone. Second, that simulated environments let people practise high-risk or expensive tasks before touching real equipment. Third, that manufacturers cannot discuss training without discussing talent scarcity, because the skills gap stops being abstract when a plant is trying to hire and standardise faster.
The question stopped being whether VR is impressive and became whether it shortens a learning curve.
That is the shift from novelty to infrastructure: repeatability, shorter ramp-up, and avoidable cost taken out of a production environment. The agency was making that case to automotive leadership while much of the industry still treated immersive systems as a pilot rather than a deployment.
The argument made in Querétaro became a product and a public milestone.
Trainlight is the immersive direction turned into an industrial product. Johnson & Johnson is the same training logic in a regulated setting, Technology HUB's Bridge Accelerator coverage is the next public milestone, and Industrial VR, AR and MR training communication sets out the logic in full.