Transforming Industrial Maintenance with XR Applications
06/05/2024
In today’s industrial landscape, digital transformation is essential. oculavis is driving this change with its
Bosch CDO distinguishes oculavis for outstanding startup collaboration as part of the Open Bosch Awards 2023
Written by
Daniel Mirbach
Daniel Mirbach
- CORPORATE NEWS
- 11 min. reading time
oculavis GmbH, based in Aachen, Germany, has been selected as one of five startups for the Open Bosch Award 2023 for its outstanding partnership with Robert Bosch GmbH and has been honored by Bosch Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Dr. Tanja Rueckert on July 3, 2023 in Stuttgart.
The Open Bosch Award has been presented since 2019 for Open Innovation projects that stand out for their excellent collaboration between startups and Bosch. The award is presented by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC). In addition, the “Open Bosch” program supports co-innovation between the Bosch Group and startups.
Provider of the Smart Service Platform oculavis
Founded in 2016, the company is headquartered in Aachen, Germany, with offices in Chicago (USA) and Shanghai (China). With an international team of 70 professionals, it develops the award-winning smart service platform oculavis, which is globally used by machinery and equipment manufacturers for augmented reality (AR) powered remote services and as a self-service portal. The software solution combines the perspectives of helpdesk, service technician and customer in one platform and offers possibilities such as remote expert support, step-by-step instructions, ticketing and the management of machines, equipment and systems in customer portals.
oculavis has already been working with Robert Bosch GmbH since 2017
At the end of 2017, the Bosch plant in Bamberg, Germany, was looking for an AR powered visual assistance solution to support internal services in special machine manufacturing with digital tools. A fast ramp-up of machines and systems in production plants around the world was the goal in order to optimally support knowledge-intensive processes during commissioning and production start-up.
"In the beginning of our collaboration in early 2018 I could hardly imagine what impact we would generate in the collaboration with oculavis. Their cutting-edge AR operator support solution helps us bridging the skills gap in global manufacturing and enables new digital services to improve end customer support services”, says Robert Elflein, Manager IT Planning at Bosch Plant in Bamberg, Germany, who initiated the partnership with oculavis.
"In the beginning of our collaboration in early 2018 I could hardly imagine what impact we would generate in the collaboration with oculavis. Their cutting-edge AR operator support solution helps us bridging the skills gap in global manufacturing and enables new digital services to improve end customer support services”, says Robert Elflein, Manager IT Planning at Bosch Plant in Bamberg, Germany, who initiated the partnership with oculavis.
oculavis was able to prevail over the competition due to the high software quality and the fulfillment of the highest security requirements when using the solution in Bosch’s highly protected production area. This was followed by workshops to define which hardware to use, such as smart glasses, tablets or smartphones, as well as intensive working meetings to deploy the oculavis software platform on local servers at Bosch as part of a so-called on-premise installation.
In recent years, 30 additional production plants have joined the oculavis Connected Worker platform for internal, but mostly cross-site applications in the areas of maintenance & repair, on-the-job training or quality management.
In order to effectively train the rapidly increasing number of oculavis users at Bosch, the two companies jointly developed an innovative train-the-trainer concept in 2021, where key users of the oculavis solution were trained to become certified experts to further drive the rollout of the Connected Worker solution.
The train-the-trainer concept and many other initiatives within the partnership have been launched by Pavel Hartl, who heads the global Smart Maintenance working group in the Bosch Group and comments on the collaboration as follows:
"Our plan is to further integrate oculavis into our smart maintenance portfolio to realize the full potential for Bosch production sites around the world. Horizontal integration into our customer service processes is also on the joint agenda.”, says Pavel Hartl, Working Group Leader for Smart Maintenance, Robert Bosch LLC (USA).
"Our plan is to further integrate oculavis into our smart maintenance portfolio to realize the full potential for Bosch production sites around the world. Horizontal integration into our customer service processes is also on the joint agenda.”, says Pavel Hartl, Working Group Leader for Smart Maintenance, Robert Bosch LLC (USA).
Cloud migration for external applications involving Bosch end customers
The increasing need for AR customer service solutions to directly support Bosch’s end customers made it necessary to migrate the on-premise installation to the cloud. After successful penetration testing – meaning the authorized attack of oculavis server infrastructure to validate system security – and the provision of Single Sign On (SSO) login mechanisms, Bosch can now use the capabilities of the oculavis platform in direct customer servie and product support.
As one of the first external use cases, the support of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) shuttles was implemented, as shown in the following figure.
In addition to the existing internal applications in the Bosch production network, external applications will now also be possible, further strengthening the partnership between oculavis and Bosch. The added values in these remote customer service applications can be found in the following areas:
- Higher service quality due to shorter response times,
- optimized service costs,
- increased availability of machines, systems or components for the end customer,
- lower travel costs for technicians due to an increased (remote) First Time Fix Rate (FTFR) and more efficient utilization of service personnel,
- lower carbon footprint due to less service travel,
- reduction of service requests from end customers by providing self services directly at the machine, plant or component,
- and the realization of innovative digital business models in after sales service.
Technology partnership in the field of spare part recognition and joint market offering
The technology partnership, launched in 2023, marks another milestone in the cooperation. oculavis has integrated Bosch Cognitive Services technology into its smart ticketing solution for machine and plant engineering, which can recognize spare parts and components using machine learning and computer vision algorithms. The use case allows the end user of a machine or system to create a service ticket via smartphone and submit a spare part identification in addition to videos or images explaining the concern. This information can be used to prequalify the service request in the manufacturer’s help desk, for example, to send the appropriate spare part and enable the end user to replace it himself via Remote Expert Support.
"The use of Bosch technology in oculavis' solution offering and the use of the oculavis Smart Service platform in Bosch's end-customer service show how both sides benefit from the partnership, providing a prime example of how collaborations between startups and corporates work eye-to-eye and over the long term.", says Martin Plutz, founder and managing director of oculavis.
Contact
For press inquiries, please contact Daniel Mirbach. For business inquiries, please contact Nikhil Venkateshan (USA, Asia Pacific).
Nikhil Venkateshan
Customer Success Manager
oculavis GmbH
Vaalser Str. 259
52074 Aachen
Deutschland
venkateshan@oculavis.de
LinkedIn
Customer Success Manager
oculavis GmbH
Vaalser Str. 259
52074 Aachen
Deutschland
venkateshan@oculavis.de
FURTHER ARTICLES FROM THIS CATEGORY
Digitalization agreement for technical colleges in cooperation with the Nachwuchstiftung Maschinenbau
12/16/2022
In 2018, the Nachwuchsstiftung Maschinenbau initiated the digitalization offensive NRWgoes.digital to prepare training and teaching
ITA Group and oculavis launch innovation program for the textile industry
10/07/2022
The Digital Capability Center DCC Aachen and the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen
oculavis opens first U.S. office in Chicago
02/16/2022
oculavis opens their first American office in Chicago within close proximity to its Midwest customers
Review of the leading business conference for Remote X and Augmented Reality Workflows
01/28/2022
More than 700 online participants attended the fourth edition of the AllAboutRemote (AAR) 2021 conference
oculavis joins the Make-IT Alliance for cooperations with developing countries
01/06/2022
We are proud to announce that oculavis is entering into a partnership with the Make-IT
CORPORATE NEWS
Transforming Industrial Maintenance with XR Applications
In today’s industrial landscape, digital transformation is essential. oculavis is driving this change with its
Mathias Horner
06/05/2024
CORPORATE NEWS
Digitalization agreement for technical colleges in cooperation with the Nachwuchstiftung Maschinenbau
In 2018, the Nachwuchsstiftung Maschinenbau initiated the digitalization offensive NRWgoes.digital to prepare training and teaching
Martin Plutz
12/16/2022
CORPORATE NEWS
ITA Group and oculavis launch innovation program for the textile industry
The Digital Capability Center DCC Aachen and the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen
Martin Plutz
10/07/2022
CORPORATE NEWS
oculavis opens first U.S. office in Chicago
oculavis opens their first American office in Chicago within close proximity to its Midwest customers
Nico Swienty
02/16/2022
CORPORATE NEWS
Review of the leading business conference for Remote X and Augmented Reality Workflows
More than 700 online participants attended the fourth edition of the AllAboutRemote (AAR) 2021 conference
Daniel Mirbach
01/28/2022
CORPORATE NEWS
oculavis joins the Make-IT Alliance for cooperations with developing countries
We are proud to announce that oculavis is entering into a partnership with the Make-IT
Martin Plutz
01/06/2022
CORPORATE NEWS
The ARxelerator Program. Background on the new innovation format of oculavis.
Every major corporate has already done it: set up its own startup accelerator or incubator
Martin Plutz
03/27/2021
CORPORATE NEWS
oculavis now offers ISO 27001 certified data protection and data security
Trust and transparency are certainly linked to the philosophy of oculavis. The trust of our
Daniel Mirbach
08/05/2020
CORPORATE NEWS
We are not saving the world, but: Corona epidemic makes the need for remote support solutions more visible than ever
For several weeks now, the corona virus has been spreading slowly but surely across the
Martin Plutz
02/29/2020
CORPORATE NEWS
McKinsey and oculavis announce technology partnership in the Digital Capability Center Aachen
oculavis is a new technology partner of the Digital Capability Center Aachen since December 2019.
Daniel Mirbach
02/06/2020
CORPORATE NEWS
oculavis wins European Scale-Up Award 2019, endowed with 100,000 Euro
oculavis GmbH, headquartered in Aachen, Germany, was named the best scale-up of the year in
Martin Plutz
11/07/2019
CORPORATE NEWS
oculavis Announced as Finalist of the European Founder Award
After being honored with the German Entrepreneur Award 2018, this year we are climbing the
Martin Plutz
09/24/2019
CORPORATE NEWS
2.5 Mio Euro for scaling our AR based Remote Expert solution
2.5 Mio Euro for scaling our AR based remote expert solution After the successful application,
Martin Plutz
07/14/2019
