Remote Technologies as Common Practice in Industrial Maintenance: What Do Experts Say?

Remote solutions open up new possibilities for collaboration and communication to solve maintenance tasks efficiently. Currently, there are no concepts to efficiently determine the suitability of such remote technologies for specific production facilities. It is therefore even more important to include current practical experience with remote technologies in industrial maintenance in the development of these concepts. In this way, the specific requirements and needs of the companies can be taken into account. In order to get an updated practical impression of the use of remote maintenance technology in the field of industrial maintenance, an explorative interview study was conducted. The aim of this study is to collect detailed examples from practice in order to be able to set up a model (category system) oriented towards practical focal points. Based on this, targeted representative surveys or practice-oriented experimental designs can be developed better. For this reason, ten interviews were conducted with maintenance experts from the business community. The results show that remote technologies have not yet fully established themselves in business practice. The main problem is the implementation of suitable framework conditions in order to be able to use remote technologies extensively.