Industry Digital: For Lifesavers and Agricultural Machinery
Tested in use, analyzed in the field, visualized onboard: With its digitization solutions, the ZF Industrial Technology Division is breaking completely new ground.
Extensive networking paves the way for brand-new products and services. In the second part of our "Industry digital" series of articles, we discuss three cases in which we shed light on the diversity of ZF expertise.
Data is an important raw material. But simply collecting data isn't enough. You also have to use the digital resource skillfully so that networked data sources of individual components create new solutions and added value for companies and users. Three examples show what this looks like in practice.
ZF Rescue Connect: When Data Saves Lives
Whether flooding, fire or landslide: Whenever disaster strikes and human lives are at stake, operations management needs a good overview as quickly as possible. You need to know promptly and precisely what the situation looks like on the ground to deal with the situation effectively: How many injured are there, where are the emergency services, which vehicles are already on the scene and how much foam does the fire truck still have in its tank – and how large is the affected area?
When it comes to gaining an overview and obtaining information quickly, technical and digital approaches now offer entirely new possibilities. While existing solutions were linked to individual manufacturers or only available for certain services, ZF now provides a unique one-stop approach. "As an open and manufacturer-independent system, ZF Rescue Connect brings together the fire department, rescue services, civil protection and many more under one roof," explains Alexander Grupp, Venture Lead of the new connectivity solution. "We're talking about an entire ecosystem, not a single product."
ZF networks vehicles, equipment and people with connectivity-enabled hardware on a single platform – from built-in mini-computers (vehicle gateways) to mobile sensors (TAGs). In addition, ZF manages to transfer interesting knowledge for a constant stream of new products: Its expertise in the automotive arena allows it to open up completely different fields. One example involves the transfer of data collected via the mobile network to a specially developed cloud, subsequent evaluation and visualization in the various software apps. These include products such as the ZF Live View APP, which creates a digital real-time location map displaying up to 1,000 vehicles per hour.
ZF Rescue Connect connects vehicles, equipment, and people on one platform.
The app also has suitable interfaces for digital logbooks, consumption history and live streaming. In the latter case, rescue workers on the scene transmit the videos from their drones, action cams and mobile devices to operations management in real time. Information flows quickly and directly to decision-makers and helps to save lives.
ZF Condition Monitoring: Data "from the Field"
The Industrial Technology Division's expansion of its digital services is not only good news for rescue services. It also benefits agricultural vehicles. Reliability in use and fault tolerance play an important role in agriculture. Field work is scheduled and timed so that the unplanned failure of one or more tractors can be costly. With costs that would be avoidable in many cases.
The drive is one of the systems in a tractor that is put under the most strain. Here, the transmission sits in a central position – in both conventional and electrified drives. ZF's idea was to combine the data that ZF itself has on the transmission with the usage data from the tractor's everyday use, allowing valuable conclusions to be drawn about the condition of the driveline. And so reliable predictions of breakdown risks to be made. "We're already a complete system supplier for agricultural machinery technology," explains Stefan Igl, Product Manager for Agricultural Machinery Systems at ZF. "We want to expand this role with a digital offering and round off our attractive portfolio from the perspective of our customers."
Data helps to make reliable predictions and thus minimize the risk of failure.
ZF can create a complete digital footprint for each transmission. Production data, measured values, batch information, end-of-line inspection data – everything that occurs during production at the ZF plant is documented. These bits and bytes are particularly valuable when they can be compared with operating data from the vehicle. "For this purpose, an existing interface can be used, reprogrammed and aggregated. In this way, valuable information on the condition of the transmission and driveline can be evaluated at any time," adds Igl. If ZF makes this information available to agricultural machinery manufacturers, they can optimize their digital offering to users and end customers. This ranges from recommendations for preventive maintenance to residual value analyses. Digital condition monitoring is thus a business model that makes ZF much more compelling for customers.
ZF Ramp Assist: Docking Gamified
Computer games, such as the cell-phone game Pokémon Go, will have been for many the first chance to use augmented reality – a way of using the device's screen to display computer-generated objects in the "real world." This hybrid blend of reality and computer graphics can also help solve tricky tasks. "Augmented reality provides real assistance in certain situations to make complex data easier to understand in real time," explains Lars Hoffmann, Product Owner Ramp Assist. "By projecting important information directly into the field of view, this shortens the reaction time and the captain can concentrate on the essentials."
Docking boats is a similarly complex situation, especially if the vessel not only has to go to the pier, but also needs to be loaded straight onto a boat trailer. As not only skippers will appreciate, this requires millimeter accuracy. This maneuver becomes even more difficult in bad weather, currents and under the influence of the tides. Here is where Ramp Assist comes into its own. Designed as an intuitive smartphone app, the tool measures and visualizes the current speed of the boat, the steering angle, wind speed and direction as well as the distance to the boat trailer. Ramp Assist then shows the optimal path as an arrow and colored route on the device screen.
"If you then place the mobile phone directly over the control console, you instantly have something like the head-up display we are familiar with from the car," summarizes Hoffmann.
The development team is currently working on adding additional features to Ramp Assist – making it an essential digital assistant for boat owners. These include an AI assistant for docking and controlling the boat lift, weather forecasts, "traffic reports" on peak periods in the port and a function that allows captains to collect points and trophies for successful docking. "We also allowed ourselves to have a bit of fun," says Hoffmann.
Makes complex data visible in real time and is a great support in certain applications: Augmented Reality.
Learn more about digitalization in the industrial technology area.
