Google rolled out its Glass eyewear to much fanfare in 2012. But the augmented reality device never caught on with typical consumers: It didn’t fill a clear market niche, and privacy concerns over its ability to capture video surreptitiously soon gave rise to the social shaming of Glass wearers. By 2015, the Google sister company X—the company that developed Glass—stopped selling the device commercially.

But Google Glass never went away completely. Over the past two years, Glass has been reborn as a productivity tool for businesses. Several companies now claim to have incorporated the device—now called Glass Enterprise Edition—into their manufacturing and supply chain processes with significant gains in productivity.

“Employees are now working smarter, faster and safer because they have the information they need right in their line of sight,” Peggy Gulick, a director of process improvement at AGCO, an agricultural machine manufacturer, said in an X press release.

AGCO reports a 25 percent reduction in production time since workers began using Glass. After saying, “OK, Glass, proceed,” workers can see an eye-level menu of process steps, instructions, or training videos on command. Using Glass, a worker can collaborate with fellow workers, even inviting others to see, through a live video stream, what he’s seeing.

Glass has also helped companies improve warehouse operations. Using custom software, courier company DHL says it found that workers using Glass picked orders faster and with fewer errors, improving efficiency by 15 percent. General Electric claimed a 46 percent decrease in warehouse picking time with Glass, according to Wired.

“Why does Glass work so well in those private settings when it so totally flopped in public?” asked Wired editor Steven Levy. “Perhaps because in the enterprise world, Glass is not an outgrowth of the intrusive and distracting smart phone, but a tool for getting work done and nothing else.”

Biometric boarding

No paper ticket? No problem. At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Sky Club members at Delta Air Lines can now board flights using only their fingerprint for identification. The airline plans to extend the fingerprint program, which launched in May, to the D.C. airport’s ticket counters for luggage drop-off—and eventually roll it out across the country.