Interview with Daniel Mirbach at the Smart Maintenance Pavillion during productronica 2019
Events | min. reading time
15th of November 2019
Dr. Andreas Dankl, CEO, Dankl + Partner Consulting / MCP Germany: "The trend is moving away from repair-oriented towards preventive maintainance, and from preventive – and this is the greatest potential – towards condition-oriented maintainance. And subsequently, if I can assess wear mechanisms in a condition-oriented way, it is moving towards predictive maintenance."
To detect manufacturing defects before they even occur, machines are equipped with sensors that measure pressure, vibration and temperature, for example. A software can use the acquired data to recognise connections and create predictive models. Real-time condition monitoring of the machines is one of the core requirements of an intelligent factory of the future.
Enrico Arndt, SPM Consultant, Status Pro GmbH: "The topic of sensor technology is very important, because exact predictions can be made: When is maintenance necessary? How much will it cost? Which materials do I have to stock up in order to minimize machine downtime?"
The networking of sensors, facilities and products as well as the digitalisation of information and the controlling with intelligent IT systems places high demands on the providers of smart maintenance solutions.
Enrico Arndt, SPM Consultant, Status Pro GmbH: "The biggest challenge concerning our sensors is to make them wireless, that is radio sensors. We do have one on the market now. The difficulty is to integrate such sensors into existing corporate networks, as security gaps could occur."
According to a survey of the consulting firm BearingPoint from 2018, more than half of the surveyed companies consider IT security a major hurdle when implementing predictive maintenance concepts. Nevertheless, the opportunities outweigh for most companies, especially in terms of system availability, maintenance costs and service.
Daniel Mirbach, Marketing Manager, oculavis GmbH: "We see predictive maintenance as a topic of the future in order to make statements about machines using data. We support machine manufacturers by connecting experts from the machine manufacturer with machine operators on site in order to jointly work on the diagnosis of the machine."
Among other things, oculavis offers a remote solution that uses augmented reality to assist users with problem solving and to simplify communication between experts and on-site staff. For this, the company has recently been awarded the EIT Digital Challenge 2019 in the category “digital industry” worth 100,000 euros.
Daniel Mirbach, Marketing Manager, oculavis GmbH: "The tangible benefits are saving travel costs, minimizing machine downtime as well as machine error rates and establishing new business models in service."
Dr. Andreas Dankl, CEO, Dankl + Partner Consulting / MCP Germany: "All these developments towards smart maintenance will gradually increase the importance of maintenance in all companies in all sectors. And that is very, very important and in the end fundamental regarding productivity in terms of effective asset utilization throughout the whole lifecycle."
The special exhibition “smart maintenance” at Productronica demonstrates the growing importance of intelligent maintenance and offers visitors the opportunity to take a close look at the future.
