The High-Tech Machinery Maintenance Companies provide a 24x7 service to factories, power plants, and other industrial installations, in which smooth running machinery is central to continuous production. A malfunction of just one machine may cost a plant or factory valuable production time. At best, a subsection of operations is impaired for a limited time period, but at worst, the entire output of plant or factory may stop, costing the company a considerable sum of money. Modern machines are increasing their complexity by the integration of Information Society Technology and Electronic modules, as it increases the qualification level of the maintenance mechanics. A substantial volume of information may needed to support the evolution of maintenance-based occupations, including the need to access machine plans, photos, or other multimedia elements; information that is required in seconds, at the lowest cost and with standard technologies.

Multinet-Based Coordinate Measurement Machine Scenario Storyboard

Txema is a member of the maintenance engineering team set up by TRIMEK to provide this service to their customers. Txema travels around the world to solve the problems that Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM) customers experience. Txema is an expert in mechanical engineering. He is a senior member of staff and some of his colleagues wish he could be in three places at the same times. However, for that to be feasible a good pair of eyes, ears and brains will have to be provided. The rest of the team could provide the arms to follow his instructions. TRIMEK has recently installed a new technology called MULTINET. Txema does not understand very well how it operates, but during the training period he has been instructed in how to use this new collaborative environment that the Management has set up for the maintenance service. In fact, the marketing force has introduced a new maintenance service based on this technology.

It has been very recently when he had experienced the benefits of the system. He could clearly remember last week when Armando, called him from Argentina. The car manufacturing company where Armando works has been one of the first to install the MULTINET system.Armando was very worried. Something has happened to the CMM and he was afraid that if something else happens he might be forced to stop production due to him not being able to carry out the quality control checks. Txema received the call on his mobile. He was tempted to tell Armando to wait for him to return to the office. Then he remembered this new MULTINET system and decided to check how far he had got into learning the use of the system. He instructed Armando to launch the MULTINET-CMM-Maintenance module. As soon as Armando launched the application a video conference was established between Txema and Armando. Txema just wanted to have a general look at the lab so he indicated the application to apply a low video QoS session. Almost as magic the application engaged into a GPRS/3G connection with Argentina. Voice though was being carried out via GSM since Txema did not want to lose any detail of the conversation with Armando. From the general view everything seemed to work fine. He asked Armando to move to a particular place in the machine. Then he moved in high QoS video session. The MULTINET system realise that the GPRS/3G connection could not deliver the demanded quality do session and traffic was re-routed over the WLAN network. Video sharpened but he noticed that the frame rate was slowing down. It did not matter, the picture was crystal. And there it was. He pointed to Armando to the problem and instructed him on the steps to follow. After monitoring the repair team for 30 minutes he knew the job was down. Unbelievable, he had managed to solve the problem without moving from Vitoria and in 30 minutes. He has even managed to get on time to his next appointment as he has moved while assisting in the maintenance to the people in Argentina. This QoS thing, whatever it means is really useful, allows me see things sharp when I need to. I will ask Jon our telecommunication engineer what does the switching between Wi-Fi and UMTS means. I am starting to like these mobile guys.