Service support using Argos

With 2,700 tech­ni­cians at more than 100 inter­na­tion­al facil­i­ties, Kro­nes is well equipped world­wide to pro­vide fast assis­tance to bev­er­age pro­duc­ers in terms of main­te­nance and spare-part replace­ment or in the event of a com­plete line stand­still. But the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has proved a stum­bling block for this ser­vice set-up: flight can­cel­la­tions, quar­an­tine reg­u­la­tions or even entry bans are ren­der­ing it almost impos­si­ble to main­tain rapid-response ser­vice sup­port when it’s nec­es­sary. And this in a time when above all the demand for pack­aged water, but also for healthy bev­er­ages is ris­ing per­cep­ti­bly – and sup­plies to con­sumers still have to be assured.

In order to pro­vide its clients with direct assis­tance, Kro­nes offers a choice of sup­port pack­ages. To com­ple­ment the exist­ing round-the-clock sup­port via tele­phone and remote ser­vice, Kro­nes has since the end of 2018 already been offer­ing the Argos Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Sup­port – and this is in such excep­tion­al times more in demand than ever before. The inge­nious bit about it is this: thanks to what are called smart glass­es, the oper­a­tor at the machine receives imme­di­ate assis­tance from a Kro­nes sup­port spe­cial­ist – with­out the lat­ter hav­ing to do any travelling.

Realtime support using smart glasses

The biggest advan­tage here is that if a prob­lem occurs dur­ing ongo­ing pro­duc­tion, the ser­vice spe­cial­ist from Kro­nes is thanks to Argos direct­ly on site imme­di­ate­ly. Using live video and audio trans­mis­sion, the Kro­nes expert is in the midst of the line with­in just a few sec­onds, enabling him to instruct the oper­a­tor and to sup­port him direct­ly and unerr­ing­ly in terms of trou­ble-shoot­ing or per­form­ing urgent­ly need­ed work, thus bring­ing pro­duc­tion back on line as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. If a sup­port­er detects a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, he can visu­al­ly alert the wear­er of the smart glasses.

The Argos basic pack­age includes not only the smart glass­es, but also all asso­ci­at­ed licences. On request, these can be extend­ed to enable the sys­tem to be utilised by the bev­er­age pro­duc­er him­self with oth­er ven­dors of his own. What’s more, an option has recent­ly been intro­duced for using not only the smart glass­es pro­vid­ed by Kro­nes, but also self-cho­sen mod­els or even cer­tain mobile phones and tablets. This enables the ser­vice sup­port to be inte­grat­ed even more effec­tive­ly into the plant’s exist­ing infrastructure.