knowledge and train new staff . “ A lot of the maintenance workers , especially the experienced ones , are close to retirement ,” explains Billar . “ This means we ’ re going to see huge brain drain walking out of the factories , and the question is , how do you capture that knowledge ? How do you make sure that the people who are coming in can actually benefit from the knowledge of their more experienced peers who are retiring ?” With this burning question in mind , IBM has put forward Equipment Maintenance Assistant .
“ We ' ve taken all the maintenance manuals , looked at all the historical cases of when a machine fails , examined the maintenance the technician did , and how the machine performed afterwards . Then we ’ ve used article intelligence to create a solution which can help a lessexperienced worker by offering three or four examples of how the failure can be best fixed .” IBM has also enhanced this solution with what it calls ‘ augmented collaboration ’. You can think of this as a sort of phone-a-friend ” says Billar . “ If the maintenance technician believes the automated solution isn ’ t sufficient , they can call someone remotely to ask for
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