augmented instructions

The downtime of a single machine can interrupt entire production chains and thus cause massive economic damage. Sample calculations show that even a single hour of downtime can cost a company several hundred thousand euros. The long-term effects on the competitive situation cannot even be reliably calculated. At the same time, a study by the market research institute Vanson Bourne shows that more than 80 percent of the industrial companies surveyed worldwide had to experience an average of two unplanned downtimes in a three-year period.

The area of maintenance and servicing is therefore becoming increasingly important, also against the backdrop of ever more complex technologies. Companies use maintenance contracts as part of a manufacturer’s warranty and also service contracts concluded with service providers. If a breakdown occurs or a maintenance task is pending, the on-site deployment of external service technicians is usually unavoidable.

With the instructor, the technology company tepcon from Donaueschingen in the Black Forest is taking a different approach. The digitalization solution enables industrial companies to carry out maintenance and servicing tasks independently over the long term, with consistent quality and without external personnel support.

Both in the area of self-maintenance and in cooperation with external service providers, the effects of the shortage of skilled workers have become increasingly noticeable in recent years. In production, companies are increasingly working with unskilled workers who do not have the know-how to repair or maintain machines independently in the event of a fault. At the same time, manufacturers and service providers are also complaining about the increasing shortage of qualified staff to meet the growing global demand. For industrial companies, this results in rising costs and, in the worst-case scenario, longer waiting times for servicing, which also has an economic impact.

The difficult conditions caused by the coronavirus pandemic have shown that even remote service solutions, which are increasingly in demand, can only solve the problem to a limited extent. In addition to the high technical requirements, the qualifications of a specialist are ultimately indispensable here too. Although their capacities are thus optimized, they remain clearly limited.

Companies are already using the option of documenting common maintenance and servicing measures and training employees.

“Training employees in theory and providing analogue or, at best, digitalized repair instructions is usually no longer sufficient in practice and constantly generates high effort and costs,” says Christoph Kluge, Managing Director of tepcon GmbH. “Although the necessary know-how is thus anchored in the company, it cannot be used efficiently or flexibly.”

With the instructor, tepcon uses the technological potential of augmented reality to record and document repair and maintenance processes as they are carried out and make them permanently available for retrieval. All work steps are recorded in images, audio files and videos and stored in cloud systems.

This means that, with little effort, easy-to-follow instructions can be created and provided for every machine and every task, which can also be reproduced by non-experts. Using QR codes attached to systems, specific AR tutorials can be accessed via mobile devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs or AR glasses, such as the Microsoft HoloLens, and followed directly on site without any additional effort. The AR technology supports the user with additional elements, such as visual markers and checklists, for the detailed implementation of all necessary work steps.