Before the COVID-19 pandemic, our team at Metis Labs often travelled around the world to install and configure our Kelvin vision systems in. factories. 

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However, lockdown and now overseas travel restrictions have led us to adapt to new ways of working. One big change is our use of Zoom on the factory floor.  

How we use it

We use Zoom, connected to one of the factory operations teams’ phones, to virtually walk along the production line. This gives us situational awareness and allows us to understand and visually inspect the production line, our systems and the interaction between the two. 

Zoom allows our experienced engineers to have detailed discussions with the operations team like they would if they were on site. 

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Since our Kelvin systems are always deployed as securely connected IoT devices our team can remotely optimise the configuration of Kelvin, deploy improvements or recommend changes for the factory engineers to implement, if required. 

By collaborating with operators on the ground, coupled with our secure remote connection to the Kelvin systems, we can quickly and remotely accomplish work that would have previously required a site visit and a full day of travel. 

How are we able to do this?

Kelvin combines off the shelf cameras and sensors with cutting edge software. As such we minimise physical installation and configuration work as much as possible. Combining the vision systems with an industrial computer located on site, we can securely configure systems and stream production data directly to the customers’ preferred cloud. 

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By collaborating with operators using Zoom, our team of software and machine learning engineers can easily deploy upgrades and improvements to the system remotely, without needing to step foot on site. 

The future is remote

Whilst this change occurred due to COVID-19, it’s something we see continuing beyond it. The ability to quickly diagnose an issue and push improvements is in everyone’s interest and we hope others in the industry will also adopt it. 

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Interested in finding out more about Kelvin? Get in touch to request a demo. 

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