Trumpf Remote Operations Support services launched in late 2024. It takes advantage of the company’s internal remote support expertise and is aimed at supporting U.S. customers in the second and third shift. The service is being rolled out first in support of the company’s 7030 platform, in part because of that product’s high level of automation.
We spoke with Christine Benz, Trumpf’s Director, TruServices, and Maximilian Rolle, Product Manager, Equipment-as-a-Service at Trumpf. We appreciate also Trumpf Public Relations & Communications Specialist Catherine Flynn and her work to put us together for an in-depth interview.
Fifth Wave Manufacturing: Can you walk us through the things that preceded Trumpf’s decision to offer Remote Operations Support?
Christine Benz: Looking back a few years, customers’ industrial machine tool providers were focusing on providing customers with the machine tools they needed and they installed the machine. And from then on everything was very reactive. The customer contacted machine tool provider when there was a problem with the machine and technical services were needed.
That has changed drastically. We at Trumpf always say it is a transition from a machine tool provider to a solution provider. Customers are not only asking us anymore for a machine tool, they are asking us for a solution to their needs and problems, and we are really trying to to respond to this request to this change, as quickly as possible.
The Remote Operation Support program is one example of how we do this. We know from our customers that one big problem they are having is finding the workforce they need—the skilled labor, especially when it comes to second and third shift machine operation. We are listening and we are trying to provide our customers with a solution.
What we are doing now with the remote operation support is we resolve small problems for our customers in the second and third shift that might cost several hours of machine production. We dial remotely into the machine.
In our current situation, the support engineers in Germany are awake when the US is sleeping or they are in the night shift operation. They remotely monitor the (U.S.-based) machine, and resolve small problems that cause the stopped production, and then get the machine up and running again for the customer. Max’ last key figures say it takes us on average seven minutes to get the machine up and running again. We save the customer potentially several hours of machine production time.
FWM: And seven minutes is a great figure. It’s not just a loss of money. Let’s pull out an easy number and say a company is charging $200 per hour for a 7030. You’re not just losing the $200 per hour, you’re affecting your clients’, and your own, schedules. Depending on how long you’re down, you potentially put at risk some very important relationships.
Benz: Yes, absolutely. At the heart of everything is the solution. Our customers are asking us for and this, and our R&D engineers are working hard to find a solution to our customers’ needs.
FWM: I do see all the machine tool vendors saying we need people and without a doubt the most common people they need are techs that go out and fly to a customer to fix a problem. It’s a bit like being in the army, they want single people who can go at the drop of a hat and not worry about family obligations. But that gets to be a lonely life, so it does not magically draw people to the job.
Benz: And this is actually another aspect I really like about the remote operation support. If you think in the old days about customers talking to us when they had a problem, it was very reactive. Now with remote operation support, we are in constant communication with our customer because at the end of a night shift they receive a report from us. “This is the problem we saw, and this is how we resolved it.”
This constant communication between our engineers and our customer, means over time, we are upscaling our customers and helping them to be more independent and to foresee problems to resolve themselves. This constant communication is really a good upscaling tool for our customers and their machine operators and maintenance personnel.
Maximilian Rolle: What Christine mentioned right now is very important. One of our test customers told us that, “It’s not just good to have you in the background when there is no one onsite, it’s also important to have you in the background when we have some people onsite. Sometimes you know how we can improve even when we didn’t know there is something to improve.” You don’t see mistakes or errors any more after a while because these teams that work on a specialized machine type have additional knowledge, more than an average customer of ours has.
FWM: As I understand it, the the 7030 is the platform. Is this in a way a test case where you could bring this to other platforms as well?
Benz: Absolutely. We targeted the 7030 because it’s a fully automated machine that is designed to run 24/7 lights out. We can extend the service over time to other fully automated machines. That could be a combination machine with a sheet master and storage solution. Any automated machine, in the long run, if it has material handling and storage attached, can be added to this platform going forward.
FWM: You have the this block of customers that handles the 7030 and then you have a block of customers that also all along has been participating in your data services and data collection and management services, so let’s talk about the intersection of these two things. It seems like it would not be a very big crowd, the intersection of these two things, but maybe I’m wrong on that. I suppose if you have a 7030 you are collecting a lot of data anyway.
Benz: I think you are touching on two subjects here. One is the remote operation support—empowering our customers from machine operation perspective, especially during unmanned night shift hours to increase the productivity of their machine. The other topic is proactive, data-driven services like condition monitoring where we are monitoring machine signals. We give the customer a heads-up that there is something out of whack and we don’t like where the signal is trending. Take care of this problem before it affects your machine’s productivity.
The first is really the productivity of the machine, the remote operation support.
The other one is the machine’s health; we want to make sure the machine is in tip-top healthy condition. Our goal with these proactive data-driven services is really to get to a place where we can say we are at zero unplanned machine downtime. If the machine is down for maintenance tasks, it’s on the customer schedule and not on the schedule of unplanned machine problems.
FWM: To an extent do those worlds merge, though? There is all this data, as you point out, from the machine health side. Then we have productivity part. However, I sense that predictive maintenance, while it’s not going away, has a further step to it. Instead of saying that your next maintenance on this will be on this date at this time because of the wear or the tool, my belief is that we are entering a time where, tied in with productivity service as you’re offering now, you can actually change predictive maintenance. You can predict the maintenance with all of the data you have, but by making the data live from the remote operations support you can change your predictive maintenance.
Benz: On all of this you are absolutely right. With our data-driven services, and with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence solutions and data analytics tools, these two worlds merge closer together. From a customer perspective, what they want is their machine up and running, and we are using both to do that. The two ways of looking at this are from a machine’s health perspective and predictive maintenance perspective, and a machine profitability perspective.
FWM: I foresee if you really have a nice successful launch here, other people will be interested in participating in it if they have those kinds of connections. How do you see this evolving once the connection is there and you’re working with those customers?
Benz: You know, the question comes up every so often: “Are you replacing machine operators? Are you replacing maintenance personnel?” And my answer to this question is always no, we don’t replace the machine operator who is physically in front of the machine. That person will not go away. Also, the maintenance person that really is at the machine and does physical tasks is also not going away, but our services are making the machine operator and the maintenance personnel even more powerful and more important and more valuable to our customers because they can do a better job.
The machine operator can start, for example, after the first shift, they put in all the material that is needed, all the programs that are needed for the machine, press the button and the machine is running lights out. If we can make sure the machine is really running through second and third shifts, we make that machine operator even more valuable to our customer.
The same scenario exists for maintenance personnel. If the maintenance personnel can be utilized to do tasks that keep the machine up and running, they are more valuable to our customers than a machine maintenance person who has to wait for a spare parts to be delivered because it was ordered too late.
So I really think our tools and our services make our customers’ employees more powerful and more important and more valuable to them. We are not replacing them.
FWM: Sounds a bit like robotics coming into fabricating. We’re not saying we’re replacing all the people with robots. We’re saying that the whole thing is changing.
Benz: Exactly.
FWM: Certainly, Trumpf doesn’t make a move into a big change, and I really do think this is a big change, without some supporting data and without some meetings around it. Asking questions like, “Is this a good idea?” or “Should we be doing this?” To start that process, you have to ask how to make this argument to the fabricator, that this is a better idea that what they were doing before. You must have downtime data, plus salary data to show them what they are saving by not having been forced into having a second person, etc.
Benz: Before I hand it over to Max, I just wanted to say one thing: As far as the data with Remote Operation Support solution our customers asked for that solution. They did these calculations for us and said, “I invested in this machine. I spent X amount of dollars, I need this machine up and running through second and third shift.” There is, of course, data crunching done within Trumpf, and Max can share more about that.
Maximilian Rolle: So you want to know if it’s really valuable to our customer in total. It is valuable. We can see at our test customers how much more productive they are. And as you mentioned before, if you calculate for a TruLaser Center $200.00 an hour, then an hour is very valuable. We can offer this service to our customers for a value price because one Trumpf employee is operating more than one machine. Our employee operates several machines at once. They are using tools like a remote control center where they have the overview of all the machines and so they get a live notification if a standstill occurs. They don’t monitor the machine all the time, just when it’s necessary. That’s why one employee can monitor many machines and troubleshoot many machines. That’s the main reason why we can offer this at a price that is lower than the hourly rate of an operator at our customer site.
End of Part I