REMOTE DIAGNOSTICS — STAYING CONNECTED

Brad Baird, lead press operator at Litho Technical Services in Bloomington, MN, was in a tight spot. The six-color, 40˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 with aqueous coater he works on was down, and there was no easily recognizable cause to be found. Fortunately for Baird, the press came equipped with remote diagnostic capabilities.

“The press would not run,” Baird recalls. “We got online remotely with Heidelberg’s service center in Atlanta and they determined that the side-guide sheet detector control was not working properly.”

The manufacturer’s technician was able to shut off the detector remotely—something Baird admits he didn’t know how to do.

Getting a Helping Hand

“It was kind of cool sitting there watching the technician go through all of the screens as he figured it out,” Baird notes. “It saved us a lot of time. He looked at the press remotely, knew to turn it (the sheet detector) off and came to a solution.”

This is a typical story in today’s graphic arts world. Instead of a printer grabbing a wrench and looking under the hood, so to speak, he or she is more likely to have the manufacturer dial directly into the offending piece of equipment when encountering a problem.

“Remote diagnostics ensure that printers have access to the expertise necessary to maintain and troubleshoot modern equipment,” says Dennis Mason, principal of Mason Consulting in Western Springs, IL. “Printing equipment today is a complex mix of computers and mechanical devices. This blending of technologies makes it unlikely that a printer can afford to maintain, on-staff, all the expertise necessary to monitor and repair equipment. This is even more true in operations that have a mix of machinery of different vintages and technology sophistication.”

At Pictorial Offset, Carlstadt, NJ, three major pieces of equipment have remote diagnostics: a gapless Goss (Heidelberg) Sunday 2000 heatset press; an eight-color MAN Roland 708 press with UV tower; and the plant’s MegTec exhaust afterburner.

The principal advantages these remote capabilities give to Pictorial are that the company saves time and money in its maintenance programs, and is learning best practices for the use of its equipment, assesses Gary Samuels, managing partner.

“Many times, this practice saves us downtime on multiple shifts,” Samuels contends. “The eight-color MAN Roland press has a remote diagnostic system called Telepresence. With Telepresence, there is a visual ‘dialogue’ between our pressmen and the manufacturer.”

Picturing a Problem

Pictorial’s press operators use a hand-held camera that can be moved to any part of the press to show where they are having a problem. Live pictures can be transmitted from the operator to the manufacturer, problems can be diagnosed and dysfunctional parts identified. This saves time in ordering parts and downtime waiting for the correct part to be identified and delivered.

“We find remote diagnostics most valuable with the problems related to the mechanical workings of the equipment—everything from bearings to gears, which are usually indicated by high temperature readings,” Samuels explains.

With the MegTec afterburner, real-time data on post-burner air quality is logged not only into Pictorial’s computers, but it also goes directly to MegTec for evaluation and statistical modeling. It has helped Pictorial measure its environmental improvement initiatives in reducing VOC emissions. Last year alone, the company reports it reduced its VOC emissions an additional 5 percent.

But it’s not just the big iron users who are benefiting from remote diagnostics. In fact, the technology has more of a history on the prepress and digital side of the industry.

Speaking from Banta Book Group’s location in Menasha, WI, Tom Clifford counts 17 Kodak devices at his plant that have remote diagnostic capabilities. The prepress/production manager has been using some form of this technology for the past decade, and relies on it to deal with just about every problem.

“We will dial up if we are having an issue—be it software or hardware,” Clifford says. “We will dial Kodak’s response center or go onto what they call E-Central to log a call. Within an hour they’ll call back and start to solve a problem remotely via a tool they call ServiceWire.”

Kodak’s technicians go through Banta’s broadband Internet connection and then connect to the equipment in question, tunneling through Banta’s firewall, Clifford explains. The technician can control the machines through the network to duplicate the problem and diagnose from the response center.

“The only time they would send someone out is if they can’t fix it remotely,” Clifford points out. “A good 90+ percent of our software issues are handled remotely.”

This time savings is key for Banta Book Group, a 24/7 operation.

“We would be dead without it,” Clifford stresses. “They are the expert eyes and the ears—and can do it from 2,500 miles away.”

Those eyes and ears not only detect problems, but can prevent them, as well. This has been the case for Tucker Printers, Henrietta, NY, which has been operating a Xerox iGen3 digital production press for the past two years.

“The press interface that tracks all of the activity when the machine is turned on sends a log via our T-1 line to the service center at Xerox,” says Tom Bertolone, prepress manager. “Every morning, analysts and service people look at it for error messages or any kind of alerts.”

Taking Preventive Steps

Xerox technicians can detect if anything is becoming a problem or if they see a trend where something is getting worse.

“They might find a problem that we weren’t even seeing yet,” Bertolone reveals. “This is a preemptive tool that we are using.”

This is different from how Tucker Printers has used remote diagnostic tools in the past. Typically it did not open the remote diagnostics on a machine until there was a problem. Now, technicians are looking at its equipment on a daily basis.

“What I used to consider as downtime is when you couldn’t run the machine—when it was broken,” Bertolone says. “But now you can consider ‘downtime’ as routine maintenance.”

This is just what Dan Tucker, the company’s president, likes to hear.

“I am actually surprised when Xerox technicians show up here in the morning or call and say they have found a problem,” Tucker confesses. “Instead of the machine going down and us having to call and wait for service and parts, they can be proactive, order the parts and bring them on the call.”

According to industry consultant Mason, remote diagnostics are only beginning to change how printers operate because many shops have not yet fully taken advantage of available technology.

“Printers historically have prided themselves—often out of necessity—in their ability to fix their machinery on the spot and stay on deadline,” Mason observes. “But the complexity of today’s equipment makes this very difficult. I believe that the printer of the future will routinely rely on manufacturers for remote diagnosis.”

Having remote diagnostic capabilities is not even a question for Banta’s Clifford. “We wouldn’t do it any other way,” he concludes. “It is part of doing busines