Customized product variants and ever shorter development cycles are defining the basic challenges in product life cycles. Moreover, enhanced product quality is connected with increasing product complexity and necessitates adapting workflow organization and integrating IT aids, which are intended to minimize process times, reduce fault potential and render complex work steps manageable. Augmented reality technology helps meeting increased requirements, particularly for manual work. Projects from the Fraunhofer IFF provide a basis to elucidate current issues in research and application.