A user’s perspective

Engineers at Tronrud Engineering can testify as to how adding innius to their machines has impacted the way they work once a machine has been delivered to a customer. As Programming Engineer and innius user, Øyvind Brokerud, explains: “The biggest benefit is that we can easily look into the data from the machine, and see how the machine is operating, and we can do this without the customer”. Øyvind no longer needs to travel to a customers’ machine to download data, which would only be for a limited period of time. Instead, once permissions have been agreed and using the innius app installed on his mobile device, he can simply check the status of customers’ machines remotely, where and when he wants, with access to real-time and past data.

New maintenance strategies

When responsible for the maintenance of machines at a distance, it’s important to minimize unnecessary travel costs. Traditional maintenance strategies would mean first travelling to physically inspect a machine to diagnose an issue, only to have to return again later with the replacement part, once it had been ordered and received. But as Øyvind explains, using innius, Tronrud Engineering is often able to conduct diagnosis remotely: “If we have a scheduled maintenance, it is easy for us to go into innius and check out the sensors, and see if a servomotor is starting to run with more torque. We can easily follow the trend of the servo and we can let the customer know that maybe it’s time to change this servo. It basically means that we can go here to the warehouse, collect the correct part, and take it with us, and replace it right away.”

More insight than the customer

For one of Tronrud’s customers, it turned out Øyvind was more aware of the factory production rates than they were themselves. “What we have seen is that based on their production, they start up really high in the morning and they are actually fading out during the evening. So that’s one of the things I have highlighted to the customer and asked for a reason. And the answer from the customer was that actually they didn’t know about it.” Nothing was wrong with the machine, so the late shift was simply less productive than those working earlier in the day!