Bring Technology To People

With increasing product diversity, the complexity of the individual production processes increases. The result: The employees also have to be continuously and continuously qualified. With the Ambi-Wise system, partners from industry and research have developed a new tool for mobile and cross-location knowledge management for assembly and maintenance. This makes it possible to bring technology directly to people and to integrate qualification measures into the work processes.

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Ambi-Wise enables employees to contribute their knowledge themselves. Five partners were involved in the project: Infoman, the research area Innovative Factory Systems of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Semantic Edge and the Institute for Technology and Work. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for three years from 2014 to 2016 with a total of 3.1 million euros.

Ambi-Wise replaces standard instructions

Ambi-Wise stands for “everyday, mobile, context-sensitive user interfaces for optimized knowledge exchange” and is an assistance and collaboration system. It enables mobile and cross-location knowledge exchange in the company. In this way, knowledge can be recorded, updated directly at the workplace and enriched with multimedia learning content. Thanks to QR codes, iBeacons or language, workers can access the learning content intuitively and in the context of the production or assembly station. With the help of pictures, videos or instructions through augmented reality, new employees are trained and the knowledge of existing staff is refreshed.

“The manufacturing and assembly area in modern companies is becoming increasingly complex. With Ambi-Wise we replace standard instructions and enable employees to create individual descriptions for machines and work steps,”explains Fabian Quint, project manager at DFKI. This means that employees not only pass on their knowledge within the team - thanks to digitization, the content is mobile and can be used across multiple locations. Outgoing employees can document their knowledge of experience and new employees can be trained more easily.

Compatible with common hardware

The Ambi-Wise user interface is based on the HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript web technologies. The system is compatible with the majority of mobile and stationary devices. The contents are stored as a tree structure, and the highest level is made up of stations that can contain activities and work steps. The work steps can be stored as conventional text or described with multimedia content such as images, videos and augmented reality instructions. This content can be recorded on site and assigned to an activity.

Among other things, smart glasses are used for video recording, which are superior to other recording devices such as tablets due to the first-person perspective. Before the content is visible in the system, it has to go through a multi-stage approval process.

First pilot applications at Daimler and Schaeffler successful

The Ambi-Wise system was tested by two application partners at five locations in the production environment. The pilot application was, among other things, the creation of learning videos with the help of smart glasses. At Daimler AG, the learning videos show the work, including additional information, from the perspective of an experienced assembly employee. The learning videos were recorded under real working conditions and form self-contained, short learning units.

At Schaeffler GmbH & Co. KG, employees were also able to rate the videos created, add content and give feedback. This serves to constantly improve and keep the system and its contents up to date. “After a 15-minute briefing, the users were able to use the system productively. Since Ambi-Wise is more or less self-explanatory, we see it as a future-proof basis for preparing knowledge in production locations in a practical manner and supporting the knowledge transfer on the shop floor,”summarizes Quint. Ambi-Wise is currently being demonstrated in the demo center of the SmartFactory KL eV technology initiative.