Stay connected to the plant floor and your employees – virtually!
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced manufacturers to quickly and dramatically change how they work, with new employee safety measures and social distancing requirements in place.
Automation Intellect is pleased to announce a new module that supports manufacturers during the shift to virtual work and what industry leaders say will become the ‘new normal’.
The Virtual Manager module allows plant leaders to oversee operations and communicate with their teams remotely, from any device at any time.
Our new Virtual Manager module includes Remote View and Virtual Support.
Remote View allows managers to securely view and monitor plant operations remotely. Managers can to log into a camera on the plant floor and view a live, video stream of a production line and individual machines. The remote view is within the security of the Automation Intellect STAR certified platform.
Virtual Support includes the ability to connect with team members instantly and hold virtual meetings on the fly when action needs to be taken.
Initiate Remote Problem Solving, Decrease Time to Resolution
Here’s an example of how manufacturers can use Virtual Manager.
It’s 9 p.m., a plant manager is at home and wants to check on a large production line running at his plant. To get a quick overview, he clicks on Plant View in the Automation Intellect operational dashboard. Visual alerts tell him Line 2 is having performance issues.
He immediately messages his production manager to log into the Automation Intellect’s Remote View to find out what’s going on. The production manager logs into the camera on Line 2 and can see that production has stopped. He also notices the line manager isn’t at his station. He messages the line manager to return to Line 2. Once he’s there the production manager initiates a Virtual Support meeting.
During the Virtual Support session, the operator on the plant floor can move the camera to the areas of the line or machine that are having issues. Together, the team can troubleshoot, and the production manager can advise on how to best resolve the issue quickly.
Automation Intellect’s Virtual Manager also supports instant messaging. Chats can occur between team members and with managers to communicate quickly, ask questions and solve problems.
For example, a line operator gets information from Automation Intellect that there is a fault in one of the machine controls. He opens the control panel but doesn’t see anything thing wrong that is obvious to him. He starts a virtual chat with the electrician who then logs into the camera to get a better look. The line operator can bring the camera to the control panel and the electrician can quickly see the problem, advise on how to fix it, and get the line back up and running in just minutes!
Virtual Installation Support
In order to adhere to new safety measures and support manufacturers ability to innovate, Automation Intellect is also offering virtual installation support.
Implementing our solution is a rapid, low disruption process. We’ll send you an installation kit with everything you need for the physical aspect of installation on the plant floor. The kit includes the secure edge device that will connect to the PLCs, a bus connector, and an ethernet patch cable, as appropriate, for your installation. We also provide video tutorial to guide you through the process.
The Automation Intellect Customer Success team handles the rest! All we need is your PLC/HMI programs and we will handle all of the tag and configuration files and mapping of your PLCs to the Automation Intellect Platform.
Whether manufacturers must drastically change to survive is no longer a question, but a certainty. Companies that leverage technology to support this change will experience the fastest path to recovery.
