I am on a university entrepreneurship course and my team is looking at how smaller manufacturing companies handle machine maintenance. None of us have spent real time on a shop floor, so I would rather ask than guess at it.
Three directions we keep coming back to:
- Vibration sensors on a handful of machines, with the readings reachable through a QR code and a simple dashboard.
- Operators taking photos during inspections, with software comparing each photo against the previous one and against the maintenance record to catch leaks or wear.
- A QR code on each machine that opens its maintenance history and lets someone log a new finding, maybe pulling in a few machine data points as well.
I know CNCs already throw alarms and that plenty of shops already pay for maintenance software, so I am not pretending any of that is new. What I cannot tell from the outside is which one a shop would still be using six months in.
If you are running older machines, which of the three would earn its place, and what would make you drop it? A rough idea of what you run and how many machines would help a lot. Thanks.