As industrial equipment becomes increasingly technologically advanced, maintenance is emerging as a strategic imperative for ensuring the performance and longevity of installations. However, training maintenance technicians faces significant challenges.
To effectively address more complex systems and a wider variety of failures, it’s crucial to intervene quickly and safely on-site.
Video assistance is a novel solution for modernizing interventions. It’s also highly valuable for training technicians directly in the field. By combining remote expertise with hands-on practical experience, it develops more effective technicians, while also reducing costs and risks.
Remote visual support: technology serving maintenance technician training
Definition and context
Remote visual support comprises a suite of digital tools enabling real-time remote support. It combines several essential features:
- two-way audio and video transmission,
- document and screen sharing,
- as well as the ability for collaborative annotations on shared content.
In the context of industrial maintenance, this technology transforms a technician’s tablet or smartphone into a direct window to expertise. It allows a remote trainer or expert to see exactly what the technician sees in the field.
Specific advantages for maintenance technician training
Instant access to expertise
Remote visual support enables real-world training on concrete problems encountered by technicians. Junior technicians can thus receive immediate guidance on the failures they discover.
Indeed, when facing a difficult diagnosis or a precise procedure, they can quickly connect. They can request help from a more experienced colleague or a remote expert. This turns every work order into a learning opportunity.
This approach significantly contributes to the reduction in installation downtime, which is a crucial economic issue in industries where every hour of shutdown represents a loss of production.
Furthermore, this approach particularly enhances knowledge retention. As learners are immersed in real maintenance scenarios, they develop an immediate practical understanding of theoretical concepts. This method proves particularly effective for acquiring complex technical skills.
Securing work orders
Remote visual support helps guide safety procedures in real-time for maintenance. This includes:
- lockout/tagout (LOTO) procedures,
- working on live equipment,
- and work orders in confined spaces.
The remote expert can ensure that every critical step is followed, significantly reducing the risk of accidents.
Knowledge centralization
The systematic recording of remote visual support sessions goes beyond simple documentation to create an evolving and dynamic database. Each work order, each complex failure diagnosis, each safety procedure explained or applied live becomes a concrete and instructive case study.
Enriched with AI, this knowledge base helps identify, in a few clicks, the key resolution steps of an archived work order. It’s also possible to find similar previously encountered failures and the summary of the associated work order.
This digital repository then becomes much more than an archive. It’s a highly valuable continuous training tool. It helps new technicians learn from past experiences. It also allows experienced technicians to review rare or technical situations.
It also facilitates a fluid and organic sharing of expertise within teams, breaking down knowledge silos. A technician facing a similar problem can:
- consult relevant recordings,
- visualize the step-by-step resolution process,
- and benefit from the advice of an expert or colleague.
This ensures operational efficiency and safety by:
- capitalizing on the company’s know-how,
- reducing dependence on key individuals,
- and standardizing best practices for field service management and safety.
Impact of remote visual support on maintenance technician skills
Improved diagnosis and troubleshooting
Remote visual support radically transforms the approach to diagnosis in industrial maintenance.
Diagnosing electrical failures
Electrical failures represent a significant portion of industrial breakdowns. Technicians can now benefit from real-time expert guidance when:
- diagnosing faulty motors,
- addressing wiring problems,
- or troubleshooting malfunctions in electrical protections.
The remote expert can guide the use of measuring devices, interpret results, and direct towards appropriate solutions.
Diagnosing mechanical failures
Remote visual support allows for precise visual diagnosis of issues with bearings, alignment, vibrations, or leaks. The expert eye can remotely identify deteriorations that a less experienced technician might miss, while training the latter to recognize these defects in future work orders.
Diagnosing hydraulic and pneumatic failures
These systems, present in many industrial facilities, particularly benefit from the collaborative approach. The expert can guide the analysis of pressures, flow rates, and temperatures, while training on diagnostic techniques specific to these technologies.
Performance optimization
Identifying the causes of equipment underperformance can be done collaboratively. This approach allows the technician to progressively acquire the expertise needed for these complex analyses, a central challenge in modern predictive maintenance.
Effective implementation of remote visual support for maintenance technician training
Choosing technological solutions
The success of training based on remote visual support largely depends on the judicious choice of technological solutions. Industrial maintenance environments impose specific constraints that must guide this selection.
Equipment robustness
Work orders are often carried out in harsh conditions: dust, humidity, wide temperature variations, or vibrations. The robustness of tablets and smartphones used by technicians is therefore crucial.
Battery life
Battery life is a critical issue, as work orders can last several hours in areas sometimes devoid of power supply. Equipment must offer significant battery life of several hours under intensive use, with the possibility of external battery charging.
Optimized mobile connectivity
Mobile connectivity must be optimized to function effectively even with limited bandwidth. Solutions should include adaptive video compression mechanisms. They should also allow for automatic switching between different networks (4G, 5G, Wi-Fi) depending on availability.
Developing specific training content
With remote visual support, it’s also possible to develop tailored educational content. Creating failure scenarios, whether simulated or from real cases, allows for the constitution of true “libraries” of learning situations. Ideally, these scenarios should cover all types of failures encountered in industrial maintenance, from the most common to the most complex.
Interactive checklists and step-by-step guides are particularly suitable educational tools for remote visual support. They allow for structured guidance of work orders while ensuring procedural consistency. These materials can be enriched with multimedia elements (diagrams, short videos, animations) consultable remotely by the expert.
Training on remote diagnostic tools is an essential specific module. Technicians must learn to effectively use the features of their remote visual support equipment to transmit relevant information to the expert. This includes: good framing, appropriate lighting, multiple viewing angles, and high-definition images.
Maintenance technician training: roles and skills of stakeholders
The remote expert, for their part, must develop specific pedagogical skills. Their ability to guide without being physically present requires a keen sense of remote observation and excellent communication techniques. They must know how to ask the right questions to obtain the necessary diagnostic information and adapt to the constraints of remote communication.
The on-site technician, in turn, must develop their autonomy and ability to accurately describe the situations encountered. They must learn to operate equipment under remote guidance, developing clear and structured communication with the expert. This skill development progressively transforms the novice technician into an autonomous professional.
Evaluation and continuous improvement
Implementing a rigorous evaluation system is essential to measure the effectiveness of remote visual support in training new technicians. Analyzing work orders helps identify areas for improvement, both technically and pedagogically. Systematic collection of feedback from technicians and experts fuels this continuous improvement process.
Regularly updating training content is a major challenge, as industrial technologies evolve rapidly. Field experience feedback must be integrated into training modules to maintain their relevance and effectiveness.
Managing confidential information is also an important issue, as industrial facilities may contain sensitive data. Implementing digital security protocols and appropriate confidentiality procedures is essential.
Future prospects for maintenance technician training
Integration with immersive technologies
The natural evolution of remote visual support towards integration with Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) opens promising prospects. AR will allow the overlay of technical information directly onto visualized equipment, enriching the training experience with real-time contextual data. Technicians will be able to view technical diagrams superimposed on real equipment, or access a component’s maintenance history simply by pointing at it.
3D modeling of industrial facilities and equipment will offer even more advanced maintenance support. Technicians will be able to train on digital twins of installations before intervening on-site, reducing risks and optimizing field service efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence and predictive maintenance
The progressive integration of artificial intelligence into industrial systems is now transforming training approaches. Technicians must acquire new skills to interpret predictive alerts and optimize preventive work orders. Training is now evolving to incorporate these new approaches, combining data analysis with traditional technical expertise.
Machine learning algorithms can also enrich remote visual support sessions by proposing assisted diagnostics and automatically identifying best practices from the analysis of past work orders.
In conclusion, remote visual support is revolutionizing industrial maintenance technician training by combining theoretical expertise with practical field experience. This approach effectively addresses the sector’s challenges:
- system complexity,
- variety of failures,
- safety requirements,
- and economic constraints.
Its progressive integration with emerging technologies (AI, AR, VR) and the evolution towards hybrid platforms position remote visual support as an indispensable tool for the future of industrial training. It is an essential lever for ensuring the performance and reliability of facilities across all business sectors.
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