As part of Deutsche Telekom's 5G/low latency program, Schwan Cosmetics initiated a pilot project with Microsoft HoloLens. These augmented reality glasses offer the possibility of remote support for maintenance and repair work. T-Systems has already conducted productive remote sessions with the Schwan Cosmetics subsidiary in Tennessee, USA. And it has paid off: the travel costs of the service staff are reduced, machine downtimes are reduced to a minimum. At the same time, the quality of communication between machine operators and specialists increases.
In a next step, the scope of services of the HoloLens application is to be expanded in order to use it, for example, for training purposes.
With the help of digital glasses and the AR solution from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions, our experts in Heroldsberg can see through the eyes of their colleagues abroad and support them with maintenance or repairs in real time. This saves costs and time: the long flights to the subsidiaries have been eliminated, and the machine downtimes are ideally reduced to a minimum.
Schwan Cosmetics is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the internationally active family business Schwan-STABILO and produces cosmetic pencils for many well-known brands. Schwan Cosmetics develops and produces the necessary production machines at its headquarters in Heroldsberg near Nuremberg and operates them at eight locations worldwide. Since the highly specialized experts for these machines work at the company headquarters, routine maintenance as well as defects in the production equipment pose a great challenge: either the employees on site have to describe the problem via telephone, email, and using photos, or a service expert has to travel on a time-consuming and costly flight in order to repair the problem personally.
The experts at the Schwan Cosmetics headquarters are connected to the machine operators and maintenance staff on site via a HoloLens desktop app and can see everything that the technician at the production site can see through his glasses. Through the field of vision of the glasses, the service expert can detect defects, give instructions for machine settings and guide the colleague through the maintenance or repair process. The support cases can be documented by adding screenshots and text annotations to the video.
Schwan Cosmetics, a subsidiary of the Schwan-STABILO family business, is the global market leader in the development and manufacture of cosmetic pencils with 3,000 employees and nine production facilities.
From the headquarters in Heroldsberg near Nuremberg, subsidiaries in various countries are supported in the maintenance and repair of production machines.
The independent mechanical engineering company Schwan Cosmetics Produktionstechnik GmbH & Co. KG with its 56 employees manufactures complex machines for the cosmetics industry and is responsible for the maintenance of Schwan Cosmetics machinery.
