There’s been a lot of buzz the past few years about how augmented reality can be used to guide workers through various maintenance and repair procedures. At Hannover Messe 2019, Rockwell Automation showcased this capability as part of its new FactoryTalk Innovation Suite. The augmented reality features in this suite come from the partnership between Rockwell Automation and PTC (read more about that at bit.ly/2FU09kK). In this demo, Marcel Reiss of Rockwell Automation shows how FactoryTalk Innovation Suite can be used to reveal information about a machine or device, such as downtime or predictive analytics. He also showed how it walks workers step-by-step through the repair process, with the ability to access additional information, such as videos, to reinforce the training process. In the demo, Reiss used a tablet, but he pointed out that Microsoft Hololens could also be used to view the procedure, allowing the worker to perform the activity while watching. Reiss also noted how the software suite can be used to not only display data, but to communicate with other systems. For example, work orders can be sent from SAP to FactoryTalk Innovation Suite or created in the suite and then be sent to SAP for routing to the correct place. In such applications, Reiss said FactoryTalk Innovation Suite can be used to assess utilization of maintenance workers during the processing of work orders.
