Aided Maintenance

Helping users perform machine maintenance through the DPS involves creating an intuitive and efficient system that suggest them the maintenance tasks to be performed at the right time.

You can leverage the concept of an Action that describe something the DPS user should do (periodically or when an event occurs) to improve the machine uptime, quality, performance or any relevant aspect.  

In this guide you will see how to configure Action and let them visible to users in the DPS.

The more actions an end-user can perform by it-self, the more a technician can focus on the real important things.
For this reason, we suggest you to start from creating actions that are visible to end-users and then focus on actions that are specific for technicians.

Configuring an Action Definition

To add a new Action Definition to a Thing Definition, you must:

1. Enter the Involvement / Actions page.

2. Select the Thing Definition to edit.

3. Press the Add Action button.

4. Provide the required information.

5. Press the Save button and edit the additional information, if needed.

Within the action definition configuration page you can edit:

• the informative details displayed in the DPS.

• the logic that activate the action in the DPS.

• the visibility of the action to DPS users.

Informational Details

The Name of the action should be concise and evocative, here are some suggestions:

• Start with a strong verb that clearly conveys the action (e.g., "Check," "Replace," "Update," "Calibrate").

  Example: "Check Oil Level" instead of "Oil Level"

• Keep it short but descriptive enough to avoid confusion.

  Example: "Clean Air Filter" instead of "Filter Maintenance"

• Maintain a uniform structure for all actions.

• Match industry standards and user expectations.

  Example: Use "Lubricate Bearings" instead of "Apply Oil to Rotating Parts"

• Avoid technical jargon unless the user is an expert.

  Example: "Drain Coolant" (simple) vs. "Execute Coolant Evacuation Procedure" (complex)

In addition to the name you can define the Description, that is a short text that gives to the DPS user an idea of what to be performed.
Also in this case, try to be synthetic and uniform across all action definitions.

The Technical Description is a rich text that describe in a detailed way the sequence of tasks and checks to perform by the DPS user.  

In the DPS, the Name and the Description can be displayed in the list of actions, instead the Technical Description is visible only in the action details page.

Active Condition

In the Action Definition you must configure the Active Condition, which creates the Action instance in the DPS.
The Active Condition can be based on:

• Period-based: for instance Clean-up the machine every month.

• Event-based: for instance if the Machine Calibration anomaly is detected, the Calibrate Machine action is activated.
  The action remains active event if the source event is closed. In this way, it is up to the DPS user to decide whether to perform or not the action.

Done / Discarded Conditions

Optionally you can specify the Done and Discarded Conditions, which are metric based conditions used to automatically mark the action instance as done or discarded respectively.

These conditions are useful if, the action is performed directly on the machine, and you want to avoid the operator user having to access the DPS to mark actions as DONE or DISCARDED.  

If needed, you can specify whether the action is to be marked as DONE automatically when the event is closed.

Visibility

When an action is created, by default it is visible to all DPS users who have access to the thing to which the action belongs.
However, the action is not necessarily intended for all types of users. Some actions can only be performed by technicians, while others can be performed by end users.
We therefore suggest that you define well which user an action is intended for. A DPS that shows all actions to all users is not effective; you risk that users will start ignoring suggested actions because there are too many of them.

You can limit the action visibility be selecting one or more target User Types.

Displaying Actions