Maintenance with foresight - via the Internet


At the EMO 2003 Trade Fair in Milan, Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) will be exhibiting the new range of "eP-Performance" ePS online services for machine tools. In addition to the existing online service for remote access to the controller and the fault management via the Internet, the ePS services are now supplemented with the preventive or foresighted maintenance.

eP-Performance now makes functionalities in the field of condition monitoring available via the Internet to service engineers and maintenance personnel all around the world. For the most part, the applications run on the ePS servers and can be used with standard PCs and Internet browsers. The control information is acquired from the machine operator and transferred to the ePS host computer, where it is compressed, evaluated and made available to specific people involved in the maintenance and service process. eP Performance offers continuous monitoring of the status of a machine tool with the aid of automatically generated test procedures and the cyclic monitoring of the states of individual machine components.

By means of trend analysis, critical developments to machine components can be detected at an early stage and countermeasures initiated. In this way, maintenance measures can be planned with foresight and accuracy. All data and information generated from the machine is stored on the ePS server and is available as machine documents for further analysis. (09/2003)