Even faster support in service cases

A picture says more than a thousand words, and a video more than a photo. ENGEL is extending the service scope of its online support and remote maintenance offering to include live video transmission. Some three quarters of all urgent service cases can be resolved remotely in this way. Troubleshooting times are reduced by 70 percent.

e-connect.expert view is the name of the new service which ENGEL developed and tested in cooperation with numerous customers during the Corona pandemic, when on-site service calls were not possible to the usual extent. The number of support cases which can be resolved online has grown considerably due to this innovation. It increases the availability of production cells, minimises downtime and reduces service costs.

In classic online support, the ENGEL service technician has access to the injection moulding machine's control interface. The new web application e-connect.expert view uses video to provide additional information on the status of the machine components and the injection moulding machine's environment. In this way, a larger range of error causes can be identified, without needing an on site service call, and resolved using a remote connection.

A number of innovative features make collaboration via a video call particularly convenient. This allows both the machine operator or maintenance technician on site at the machine and the ENGEL service technician to draw freely in the video image, for example, to highlight details that are difficult to see.

e-connect.expert view relies on optical character recognition (OCR) to automatically identify the IDs of the machine components and transfer them to the service ticket. This reduces the risk of input errors.

The full feature scope of e-connect.expert view is available independently of the hardware used. Video telephony is supported on both smartphones and tablets and using augmented reality (AR) glasses. The only pre-requisite is an internet connection. Other devices or software products are not needed. The ENGEL service technician sends the customer a link to the e-connect.expert platform to start the collaborative work immediately. Even a slow data transmission rate of 300 kbit/s or more is sufficient for interruption-free video calls.

Smartphones and tablets enable very easy access to the new service options. In addition to this, ENGEL supports virtual collaboration via augmented reality. The advantage that AR glasses offer is that both hands remain free to work on the machine. Besides this, additional information supporting the collaborative work can be displayed in the form of text, animated objects or short video sequences.