Abstract
The manufacturing industry is subject to constant change. New trends keep comingup. Industry 4.0 has not only brought with it highly flexible manufacturing processes
and connected machines, but also assistance systems, originally known for their use in
aircraft and motor vehicles, are becoming increasingly important. Due to the growing
complexity of production systems, more and more faults are occurring during operation,
the causes of which are often not immediately apparent. This is where the assistance
systems mentioned above come into play. The overarching goal of this Master’s thesis
is to minimize plant downtimes caused by malfunctions with the help of a specially
developed digital assistance system. But how should such a system be implemented so
that it is easy and convenient to use without compromising efficiency? To answer this
question, the plant operators – who represent the future users of the system – were
involved in the decision-making process right from the start of the concept phase. Based
on the objective, the requirements of the assistance system were defined together with
the production workers. The wishes of the various employees were also taken into account
in the further course of the project. To this end, the system under development was
tested in several cycles on a real plant. After each field test, the feedback obtained
was evaluated and the prototype was refined accordingly. During this phase, the ability
to document corrected errors emerged as one of the most important features of the
developed solution. In this way, the assistance system can learn and offer even greater
help in the event of future faults. Feedback has shown that the plant operators perceive
the system not only as a tool for troubleshooting, but also as a platform for joint problem
solving and knowledge sharing, which is usually only possible to a limited extent in
production plants. However, now that a few of the suggestions for improvement still
need to be implemented, the development of the prototype – including iterative field
tests – will continue. In addition, a comparison of plant downtimes before and after use of
the assistance system is still pending, which will serve to evaluate the effectiveness of the
implemented system. Only then can actual commissioning in production be considered.
| Date of Award | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Original language | German (Austria) |
| Supervisor | Gerald Ostermayer (Supervisor) |