Case Study – Intertek Caleb Brett, Thornton, UK
Sometimes the repair required is complex enough that the manufacturer would rather bring the entire unit back to the factory. This might be because it requires specialist equipment to implement, or because it’s difficult to convey all the possible optionality involved in the troubleshooting via an email or work instruction. But for customers, return to bench repair represents huge cost and protracted downtime. So, when XOS recently considered this for Intertek Thornton’s XOS Maxine instrument, we wanted to explore options with our new aR headsets from Realwear and the Maintastic platform. These new tools made it possible to repair the instrument in-situ, resulting in reduced repair costs for the customer and avoiding weeks of shipping and paperwork.
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- Reduced downtime by weeks (estimated 4 week round trip)
- Cost of repair reduced by several £1,000’s
- Increased SSS engineer knowledge via in-situ troubleshooting
“The Maxine is a key instrument for us. I really didn’t want it out of action for that long, or the inconvenience of shipping and return of the instrument along with the required paperwork.”
Dave Owen, Sr. Associate Researcher, Intertek ThorntonSSS Senior Field Service Engineer, Nathan Burley, had been discussing the problem with XOS Technical Support Representative, and Maxine specialist, James Illenberg. James thought he knew what was causing the issue but it was going to require a complex dive inside the Maxine’s beam and shutter assembly, something Nathan had never done before. Nathan pitched the idea of James guiding him through the repair via an AR call, and XOS Services Manager, Amy McAdoo, enthusiastically agreed.
“I was pretty excited to be getting into the details on the Maxine and having James’ expertise on hand was brilliant.”
– Nathan Burley, Senior Field Service Engineer, SSS
Nathan made a site visit with his Realwear Navigator-500 headset and sent James a link via the software platform Maintastic. James joined the call without having to login or download any apps. Once in the call he was able to see everything that Nathan could. As well as providing audio instructions to Nathan, James’s mouse clicks appeared on Nathan’s Navigator-500 display for instant guidance. James could even pause the video feed to get a high resolution still image to annotate when Nathan was moving.
“Video quality was really great. I was able to walk Nathan through a complex process easily.”
– James Illenberg, Technical Support Representative, XOS
The issue turned out to be a loose shutter motor. With James’ help the system was back up and running in a couple of hours and Dave and his team could get back to work. Also, because of Maintastic’s new network structure, SSS were able to have Junior Field Service Engineer, Ivan Lesnianski watch the process without impacting call quality. Nathan is documenting this process so future SSS engineers can cross-train on this case.
“Being able to make the repair in-situ and avoid a return to bench saved the customer £1000’s in shipping, and massively reduced downtime. It was great to be able to deliver that.”
– Nathan Burley, Senior Service Engineer, SSS
Not only does this case again highlight how assisted reality and great software are helping us reduce customer downtime, it also helped us save the customer money and improve engineer knowledge. As we see more cases like this, we’re using them to build workflows and help other SSS engineers absorb the training and experience of the group at very little cost to the business.
