Confindustria Ceramica

Tecnologia STAR_AST-LBby Thomas Foschini15   Dicembre   2017

STAR: 4.0 diagnostics onto your smartphone

AST4 presents its new access point to diagnostic services and maintenance. The starting point is LB, but the aim is to get into the world.

On one side there are technology providers, all (or almost) equipped to provide, together with machinery, service packages and softwares for diagnostic maintenance. On the other side there is today's image society, where smartphones enable everyone to interface with the outer world. That is the context where AST4 - a start up created in 2016 with the aim of integrating diagnostic maintenance services into the ceramic manufacturing - is operating, providing softwares as well as professional and technical training.
The firm holds a privileged relationship with the Fiorano Modenese-based LB, whose range of products "naturally" integrate the AST4 software platform for diagnostic maintenance. But the company goes even further, presenting STAR (Superior Technology Augmented Reality) a new app for smartphones and tablets that can operate in augmented reality through supporting features such as HoloLens, which enable to access all diagnostic maintenance and replacement services  simply through  placing the camera on the object.
 

“To date – explains Stefano Puccini, electronical engineer and managing director at AST4 – all companies offer  4.0 services packages. The challenge is to make this huge amount of data and information useful to the client, so as to make professional training and work easier, standardize procedures, storing maintenance services so as to develop at the same time technological upgrade and a mentality change in the firm”.
According to the developers, STAR's strong point lies in the increased facility to access the system: “The application – explains Stefano Puccini – exploits  augmented reality, making a series of information overlapping the real object immediately available, from a 3D exploded view to the origin of alarms, from the spare part to order or to be found in stock through the relative identification code, down to real maintenace work”. Just to make an example: in case the main stay engine alarm goes off, it will suffice to open the distribution board and read it through the smartphone camera, open the alarms diagnostic, and the single flawed piece will be highlighted by the app overlapping information to the real electric panel. To carry out the actual repairing you just need to follow the maintenance procedure which appears by acting upon the real component that the application visualizes in 3 D.
 

What are the advantages of getting all this information by simply scanning the component? First, we only get the necessary information on the screen, with the possibility of information being tailored according to the type of work needed (electric, IT, etc.). Second, it is a true democratic access door (“smartphones are owned by everyone, all over the world and at all levels in the  company”). Third, training of the new maintenance technicians, to whom the app not only provides simple and accessible details for maintenance but focusing on any part of the plant it detects where the component to repair is. Last but not least, despite these 4.0 diagnostics hubs being usually available in the computers next to machinery, they are normally far off and distant from each another considering how installations are set up. “It is the technician himself, Puccini observes, that can physically move through the unit, scanning the various parts and identifying where the problems arise”.
Process data and origin of alarms; the entire technical info about the single component and the necessary maintenance steps; the history of the maintenance work carried out; these are just a few of the things operators can access through their smartphone. Once the issue has been identified, in order to do maintenance work hands free, the technician can also use innovative HoloLens.
 

Among the main features of STAR: data exchange; alarm detection and spare parts diagnostics; documents features (such as the draft of a specific machinery part or a particular extract of the users manual). Furthermore, as far as spare parts are concerned, the "cart" feature has recently been introduced so that now the technician can directly send a request to the purchases department if the spare part is not on stock.
Trivial issues such as the presence of obstacles in front of the machine, a different lighting system or a variation in the external conditions, which could prevent the application from working properly, have been solved by previously memorizing some key points into the object, through modern techniques of  image acquisition and overlapping. “A focal point, explains  Stefano Puccini, is information not being placed inside the smartphone but in the machine server, which is interfaced, upon client's request, with our remote server. The system is naturally open and customized according to the specific unit configuration and customers needs”.
 

First introduced at a special preview during an open day in Fiorano Modenese and presented as an evolution to the LB Plus system and customization of the AST4 package for LB,  STAR is customizable on every type of machinery and installation currently on the market (both in ceramics and other sectors). “The client is simply to ask his own supplier for a users guide and 3D exploded views of the different components, which are normally available but rarely of any use due to their huge size, difficulty, different functions, skills and firm expertise”. With a view towards tomorrow: “In principle, says AST4 manager, the solution can be equipped with self-learning features. In the future the client himself will be scanning a new machinery component, instructing and repairing the application”. We are basically moving towards self-configuration of one's own access  door to Ceramics Industry 4.0.