1、Preventive service—New competitive strategy for device manufacturer

 How do modern industrial manufacturers maintain and manage their nationwide or even  worldwide machines?Let’s read this dialogue:
Machine: I am an intelligent machine working in Qingdao.
Monitoring center: I am the maintenance center in Shanghai. Hello, Machine No 5, how are you feeling now?
Machine: Er, maintenance center, my operating temperature is too high, my cutting edge is blunt, and I have made some non-fatal mistakes. Well, my consumables are only available for five days’ work. But I do not want to ask for sick leave in spite of busy work.
Monitoring center: Can you hold on for another three days? Now we will adjust your workload to 85%. Three days later we will arrange maintenance engineers to carry out filed maintenance and you will be fine then. Any more requirements?
Machine: OK! I’d like a check from the expert system.
Monitoring center: Sure, now we are connecting you to the expert system…
   This scene is not imaginary, which is exactly the preventive service being executed by more and more device manufacturers. From the traditional faults/reaction maintenance to the preventive maintenance, the maintenance for machines has made great process in the past thirty years. Let’s have a look at the differences between traditional device maintenance and the preventive method.
Stage One--Traditional Faults/Reaction Maintenance System
Field maintenance for emergency
      Passive maintenance
      Sudden device fault breakdown
      Traditional reactive default maintenance cost factor is 15
      Stage Two -- Network Connection Support Reaction/Faults Maintenance by Some DevicesRemote maintenance for emergency
      More maintenance service
      Less sudden device breakdown
      Reactive default maintenance cost factor of the simple network is 5
      Stage Three—Preventive maintenance System with Overall Network of Devices
      Positive reaction (Monitoring+ Prediction+ Rectification)
      Remote maintenance
      Device breakdown and maintenance as planned
      Preventive maintenance cost factor is 1
      Device manufacturers build a self-contained maintenance center and interconnect nationwide or even worldwide distributed devices. The maintenance center examines devices periodically, gathers and analyzes operation data in order to detect the critical condition of devices, and to plan maintenance and repair during the customers’ free time.
    Take the air-conditioner maintenance of emporiums and office buildings for an example: it happens after work time to decrease sudden breakdown and to win benefits for customers. As far as device manufacturers are concerned, it efficiently lowers the maintenance cost, provides more advanced expert services for more customers through network, and promotes the maintenance level.
   This is the preventive maintenance, the advanced maintenance solution which is adopted by more and more device manufacturers.
2、Construction of Device Remote Maintenance Network to Promote Service Capability
 2.1、Wireless Network Utilized as Bearing Network
   When employing the remote control technology to build up the maintenance system of central air-conditioners, we must take the convenience and cost of implementation into account. Due to the nationwide distribution of air-conditioning units and the 24-hour all-weather monitoring of maintenance system, we must select a technology solution free of time and space limitations.
     – As GPRS mobile data application being matured, CDMA/GSM will cover all cities and countries, and upgrade to 3G network.
     – Communication rate:
         CDMA 1x: average uplink rate 80kbps, average downlink rate: 113kbp;EDGE: highest transmission rate 474kbps.
     – Charge according to data flow ,which is far smaller than that of traditional DDN  service
     – Always real-time on line and compatible with TCP/IP protocols.
         Advantages above enable 2.5G networks such as GPRS/CDMA to be the first choice   for industrial communication.
2.2、 InHand Device Network –Integrated Solution Aim at Device Network Requirement 
        Aiming at the particularity of device network, we has improved the solution of device network gradually with lots of practiced cases and brought forward InHand Device Network, an integrated solution which is designed for device network requirements, to offer a communication basis of the remote maintenance for device manufacturers.
        InHand Device Network has two powerful supports, which help provide remote device network for device manufacturers stably, reliably and quickly.Product and technology support: Our mature terminal products series--InRouter GPRS/CDMA/EDGE routers，network management software tools of the control center, Open Virtual Device Platform—Inhand innovation technology architecture.
       Network system and service support: Particular emphasis on complete network solutions and network whole-life-cycle services, which involve stages such as requirement & planning, Design & verification, solution execution, operations maintenance, assessment & optimization, to meet overall customer requirements for network usability, security and reliability.
3、Construction Goal of Central Air-conditioner Remote Maintenance Network
    Central air-conditioners manufacturers need to construct a monitoring and maintenance system in the maintenance centre to implement the management of the  nationwide and worldwide central air-conditioners, such as field operation data gathering and uploading, variable monitoring, parameter setting, controller program updating and upgrading. Function like historical data storage into the database also has to be realized. Meanwhile, it will enable the management staff to browse and control data, set filed network device parameters through web pages, and to provide the operation data in appointed storage forms to maintenance and analysis workstations which connect to the control center for analysis and process.
4、Network Architecture of Central Air-conditioner Remote Maintenance System
   4.1、 OVDP Technology Architecture
     To overpass obstacles in all-IP network construction with traditional control devices and configuration software, we bring forward the Open Virtual Device Platform technology architecture.
    OVDP Platform has accomplished:
           Unified access, management and data collection of remote devices;
           Simple data interfaces for enterprise application;
           Free of complicated network details;
           Optimized data transmission adapted for the narrowband network.
 5、Detailed Description of Remote Maintenance Network Parts
   5.1 Data Communication Mechanism and Feature of Remote stations
1、Traditional controllers will generate lots of data variables, which are useless for the monitoring center. So when wireless routers have received the communication protocol and data format of customer controllers, they can employ data analysis and filtering mechanism to transmit variables to the center, which will avoid a big waste of bandwidth.
 2、Various wireless networks, such as GPRS，CDMA1X，EDGE，WCDMA, are utilized to connect controllers with the monitoring centre.
3、Different communication protocol processing modes are chosen according to different controllers and communication interfaces such as Ethernet interface and 435 interface.
5.2、 Data Communication Mechanism and Feature of Communication Servers
   ★ The communication server is responsible for receiving the controllers operation data transmitted from wireless routers, processing data analysis, and providing the operation data in appointed storage forms to maintenance stations which connects to it and analysis workstations for analysis and process.
 ★ The receiving administrator sends out instruction from the web controlling page, and transmit it to far-end controllers, which will response the data and feedback it to the receiving administrator.
 ★ Operation state will be under real-time monitoring.
 ★ Operation state and data will be stored into the database.
 ★ Alarm function.
5.3、 Service System Maintenance & Communication Process Maintenance between WEB Management Servers and Communication Server
5.4、 Data Base Servers
       Responsible for the storage of data received by communication servers. The system automatically classifies, numbers them and stores them into the database.Recording the operation process of managers and generating logs.Data automatic backup function.
5.5、 WEB Management Severs
   The utilization of OVCP has realized double management on remote network devices InRouter and other devices .It also has constructed a network management  centre and realized functions below.
    ★Web pages provided by Web management servers make the controller data monitoring and parameter setting convenient for administrators.
    ★Graphical display for device states: normal connected, disconnected, alarming.
    ★Available operations on devices such as examining the device operation log.Alarm function. When the communication server detects the far-end controller  faults, it will give notice to the web management server. Then web management server sends SMS alarm through the web monitoring homepage to the receivers set  beforehand by the administrator.
    ★Authority management to provide common authority and resource restriction of visitors.
    ★Grouping function. The administrator is able to implement setting beforehand to group remote controllers, build up virtual sub-networks. He can also  map the web pages responsible for sub-network management to the far-end servers through internet to form data share
    ★Report function. Network state and history record will be provided in the analysis reports, which can automatically employ the received records to generate annual, monthly, daily reports.
    ★Connection to map GIS system.
5.6、Advice of Maintenance Service System and Expert System
   To be pre-aware of potential problems of devices in advance and bring forward appropriate maintenance plans, we need to build up the maintenance system, appoint a person responsible for 24-hour monitoring on customer air-conditioners, and analyze the operation data gathered. Meanwhile, we provide suggestion for customer device management rationalization, decrease the maintenance cost of both sides, and improve work efficiency.
6、Benefits for Customers brought by Device Remote Network：
     Less device breakdown and fault to win benefits for customers.
       To offer customers more profits and less cost.
    Faster maintenance response for promoting customer satisfaction.
      To diagnosis the device fault accurately and correctly, and provide high efficiency maintenance and appropriate spare parts.
    Professional service and consultation for more customers to promote service technology level of device manufacturers.
    Enhanced maintenance efficiency of device manufacturers and lowered maintenance cost.
      To reduce field maintenance and after-service cost.
    Pre-aware of potential problems and providing planned maintenance to reduce costumer loss.
      To offer device detection, which helps plan device breakdown for maintenance to ensure advanced maintenance when devices are in critical conditions.   
      Centralized Management, unified service and maintenance flow, decreased discrepancy and lowered management cost.