Live Video Assistance Systems for Assembly Processes

Production processes, which significantly contribute to the company’s success and the competitiveness of a company, have become more complex and, not least due to digitization in industry, are demanding a change in the training and qualification of employees. Digital assistance systems provide an interface for human-machine interaction and are designed to support employees in complex tasks. The Graz innovation center EVOLARIS is developing, among other things as part of the MMASSIST II research project, a system that supports the shop floor worker in such a way that, when complex installation or maintenance work occurs, experts use live video to monitor and guide the work process, thereby being able to successfully manage high complexity of the task. This on one hand should lead to decreased time that an expert is required to be on site to fix a problem resulting especially in reduced time-to-fix, availability, travel costs, and CO2 footprint, and on the other hand improve overall process quality. Systems like WhatsApp or Skype can be used on some cases, but often production companies require dedicated solutions, which work with industry grade hardware including smart glasses, have a specialised set of functionalities that are really required by professional workers and easy to use in stress situations, where data can be stored on serviced on premise or in a local data center, and/or the solutions can be personalized/white labelled. Since such systems are still new and there is little experience in practice with regard to their acceptance in the target group and the impact on process efficiency they have, a study was conducted in a survey of users who have already had several months of experience with such a system during a pilot phase.

Since the eighteenth century, the industry has been undergoing constant change, which has currently reached its peak with the fourth industrial revolution, the networking of intelligent technical systems known as cyber-physical systems (CPS). The basic idea behind networked production was to make it more efficient and flexible by means of forecasts and forecasts. From the data obtained from assembly processes and the associated systems, decision-critical information can be obtained for the company with the appropriate data quality. Digital assistance systems apply this information to assist workers in their actions and their extended use in human-machine interaction, with humans increasingly taking on a supervisory role (Haase et al. 2015). In parallel to the increasing human-machine inter-action, however, the need for rapid knowledge transfer between specialists is also increasing, in order to be able to quickly clarify special questions in the use of increasingly complex machines. The innovation center EVOLARIS is developing such an assistance system, which supports the strategy of “networked” employees via live video remote support.

This section presents the results of an online survey on system acceptance, which was conducted as part of a master thesis accompanying the system development. The survey was aimed at employees in the areas of production, service and maintenance from 15 well-known Austrian, internationally operating companies on their experience with the use of the EVOCALL live video remote support system. The companies were selected according to the criteria of the necessary knowledge transfer, as well as an on-site presence of experts to fulfil the service offered. The participating companies fulfilled both criteria to a high degree and where given access to the EVOCALL system for the duration of 6 months in a trial phase. Of the 200 target people addressed, 50 (25%) participated in the survey. The findings presented here relate in a first step to the dimension of the service in terms of the usefulness and usability of the system, but also in relation to the efficiency and the effectiveness of the processes when using such a digital assistance system. As can be seen in Fig. 3, of more than 70% of the participants, the dimension of perceived usefulness is rated on a five-point scale, where 1 means “applies strongly” and 5 “does not apply at all”, to 1 or 2. The points of view of perceived usefulness include a comparison between the experiences made and the expectations (Question 1), the usefulness of the system (Question 2), the simplicity of the system (Question 3), and the usability of the system (Question 4).

These results suggest a very high perceived benefit and high acceptance of the live video assistance system by the participants.

The next two questions related to the degree of goal achievement, the result compared to the original goal (effectiveness) and the degree of efficiency, as well as the result versus effort (efficiency) (Fig. 4). More than 90% of respondents believe that using EVOCALL can increase their effectiveness. More than 80% of the respondents that EVOCALL can increase efficiency. The effectiveness in this context refers to problems that exceeded the abilities of the employees and could still be solved through the use of EVOCALL via the assistance of colleagues. The efficiency refers to an accelerated problem-solving cycle and the resulting increase in plant availability.

Further results of the online survey showed that service and maintenance work is characterised by complex and varied activities and that the employees require extensive training. This complexity of the plant requires distinctive communication on different channels when assistance is needed. These channels, however, have limitations with regard to delayed or unclearly assignable responses due to asynchronous communication channels (e-mail or WhatsApp), or more difficult problem identification with regard to problem description due to lack of qualifications by local staff and language barriers (telephone). This results in an increased presence of experts on site, which is reflected in the duration of the repair time and thus in the availability of the system.

As can be seen from the answers reflected in the two figures above, the effectiveness and efficiency of the work processes can be positively influenced by the use of EVOCALL. Synchronous audio-visual communication enables the employees to carry out more highly qualified work processes under the guidance of experts via EVOCALL, which can lead to a reduced on-site presence of experts according to the results of the surveys.

The change in the industry and its effects on prevailing assembly processes as well as on the changed qualification needs of employees requires the use of new methods and technologies such as digital assistance systems as an interface for a human-machine interaction or as an interface between employees. The analysis of the live video remote support system EVOCALL as such a digital assistance system has shown that the use of production and service processes can be positively influenced. The results from companies that have already tested EVOCALL indicate that live video remote support systems have a high perceived value for users and have a positive impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of task completion. Summarizing the collected results, they clearly indicate that EVOCALL has a positive impact on the current service and maintenance processes, improving communication, reducing the need for on-site presence of experts, and having a positive impact on the problem-solving cycle and the problem-solving skills of service and maintenance personnel. The survey provides new insights by quantifying the extent to which users, who had the opportunity to experience a live video remote support system in practice over a longer period in time (6-monthly trial).

However, due to the relatively small number of cases (n = 50) and the specificity of the tested system, the findings ca not be generalized without further notice. Much depends in practice on the actual implementation of a live video remote support system and how easy it is for the users to use or what features are actually supported and how the integration into the general enterprise IT takes place. Through studies with larger case numbers and through the comparative analysis of various systems, a more general and even better reliable statement about the benefits of such digital assistance systems in production is to be made possible in the future, or the existing findings will be verified.