LorisQ was very active at this year’s IMEKO (International Measurement Confederation) TC10 conference which was co-hosted by EUROLAB (European Confederation of National Association of Measurement, Testing and Analytical Laboratories). The theme of the conference was “Global Trends in Testing, Diagnostics & Inspection for 2030” and we were greatly honoured that our founder Siniša Prugovečki held one of just few invited keynote lectures. Other keynotes included Etty Feller from Israel, the Chair of the ILAC (International Laboratory Accredited Cooperation), Jeff Gust from USA, Chief Corporate Metrologist of Fluke and Bernd Kroon, EUROLAB board member.
Social network for labs?
Our keynote was “From Cloud Networking to Predictive Measuring Equipment Maintenance for Everyone”. We wanted to show that the key technologies which are already present everywhere (Cloud Computing and Network Structures) can also be used to take away all the trouble that is related to equipment management and maintenance. But the real emphasis is in the end – “FOR EVERYONE”. There are many apps nowadays that are for everyone, like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Unfortunately, we as a society, find that there are many aspects of social networks that are really negative. That is because they deal with people. But the same technologies used in Facebook or Instagram can be safely applied to measurement and lab instruments instead of people. And that can drive improvements in equipment management not just for one or few big companies, but actually for every SME, lab, or anyone who uses them. That is the power of big data, and that is why this is the way to go to achieve real predictive maintenance. Cheap and for everyone. In fact, this is the way of the LorisQ.
Traditionally, equipment management and maintenance is done by scheduling it (usually every year), and then keeping it in just one “silo”. Organizations have a person, or few of them, who are responsible for keeping the equipment in order. However, a few very important things are overlooked. Taking care about organization’s equipment is actually cross-functional, i.e. it involves not just people that are responsible for this yearly schedule, but the people that work with the equipment on daily basis (technicians) and people who are responsible for the equipment in different ways (heads of labs, heads of quality, even purchase). Moreover, the equipment management and maintenance is more than cross-functional. It is cross-organizational. Every organization performs just some of the maintenance activities (like cleaning or internal accuracy checks) in-house, and many things are outsourced to subcontractors (like accredited calibration or re-qualification). In order for our equipment management and maintenance to function seamlessly we have to keep everyone in the loop throughout the year. Technicians, heads of departments, and even other companies – our outsourced service providers. Up until LorisQ, no software solution thought about it. There were no networks in their architecture.
Future of equipment management is here
In the keynote lecture, Siniša showed how LorisQ with these simple technologies in its core can be used right now to solve all 8 problems left unsolved by standard software solutions for equipment management (Microsoft Excel included).
- People very often forget to do maintenance from their schedule.
- It is difficult to coordinate outsourced companies.
- Documents about the equipment are not always available when we need it.
- Important news and unfortunate events which sometimes happen with our equipment don’t always reach us quickly enough.
- All the people responsible in some way for our equipment are not aware of ongoing maintenance activities.
- After some time, chronology of important events when something went wrong is difficult to track with many people involved.
- Maintenance (and especially calibration) data is not used to predict the performance of our measuring equipment in the future, and this might save a lot of money and time.
- Calibration data is not used to improve accuracy of your own test results.
And as we said earlier, LorisQ can resolve all of these problems, and all thanks to two simple technologies. Cloud technology enables 24/7 access to information, updated in real-time to everyone in a team. Network-based structures enable the flow of information not just in one team, bet even between teams (think about your service providers). And if we look to the future – this two technologies enable the growth of big data reservoir which is the predicament for machine learning and sophisticated predictive models for your equipment.
Exactly how this predictive models with big data can improve equipment management was shown additionally in our second lecture which was held at the end of the conference by our CTO Mirna Lerotic. It was part of the conference section called “Measurements, testing, inspection and diagnostics for industry 4.0”
If you need more info about LorisQ or simply want to ask us something about equipment management feel free to contact us: info@lorisq.com