In normal times, customers used to travel to our plant in The Hague for the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) of their new packing lines. Obviously the pandemic has made that difficult or impossible. For this reason, Weighpack started working with RealWear Augmented Reality (AR) glasses last year, and they have proved to be very useful.
Remote PDIs
To avoid delayed delivery, customers can now do the PDI remotely. One of our technicians walks around the line, wearing AR glasses so the customer can see the machines in an MS Teams (or Zoom or Webex) session. They can ask our technician to move around the line and test and demonstrate the equipment. The customer can see and hear exactly what our technician experiences, through the camera and microphone in the AR glasses. This gives them almost the same experience as being on site, and also saves travel time and costs. Once the PDI is completed successfully we can ship the line to the customer.
Remote maintenance support
Our quotes for new packing lines now include these AR glasses as an option. If the customer gets the glasses and needs technical support from Weighpack then one of their technicians can walk around the line in their plant and our support team in The Hague can see exactly what is going on. Of course, we can also provide remote maintenance without the AR glasses. In that case the customer’s technician simply uses a phone or tablet with a camera, and the WP-connect feature.