A New Generation and a New Process - An Application That Can Do for Technicians What CAD Does for Engineering

摘要

Today, industry is faced with a serious shortage of skilled technicians, while the drives and controls of steelmaking equipment become ever more sophisticated. Compounding the problem is the increasing demand for more uptime to offset non-recoverable downtime. This paper presents a process that combines the new generation of technicians with a technology tool that can put them on par with those having much more experience, hence growing a more efficient upcoming generation of troubleshooters - more efficient because of the incredible technology tools that are now available, formatted, and applied into the industry at an ever-growing pace. A recently patented application titled iSchematic, engineered particularly for the Y generation (Gen Y) of technicians, may very well do for them what CAD has done for engineering. Many of the boomers remember and have followed the birth and evolution of AutoCAD in industry, developed and marketed by Autodesk, Inc. AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 and by 1986 became the most ubiquitous microcomputer design program worldwide. More important, CAD technology has changed how engineering design is practiced and has clearly been a major element in the increase in industrial productivity over past two decades. Although far from being able to predict the exact technology that will change the process of troubleshooting sophisticated industrial machines, assuredly change in the current approach of the process is beginning to evolve. The following is an example. The process of taking existing machine documentation and converting or filtering it to become contextually specific for maintenance application and deliverable over mobile devices will forever change for better the way troubleshooting equipment is done. The boomer generation of maintenance technicians is passing the baton to Gen Y. As this transition takes place, tribal knowledge, skills, and procedures can be captured and digitally passed on to a new generation, inherently prepared to combine that captured knowledge with technology tools.