Webinar: How to optimize each intervention with the Augmented Worker

The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the need for business development in several sectors, particularly field services. With these changes come challenges for the companies which have difficulty in digitising their processes. Marc Minisini, Managing partner at BengS and Aloïs Brunel, co-founder and CPO of Deepomatic led a webinar presenting the concept of the Augmented Worker. This solution enables the optimization of each intervention thanks to Computer Vision technologies. If you did not have the opportunity to participate in the webinar, here is a summary.

The Augmented Worker: an asset for companies

What is the Augmented Worker?

The Augmented Worker solutions are based on an artificial intelligence technology called Computer Vision. Computer Vision aims to process and analyze images and videos in order to automatically understand their meaning and context. In order to enable field technicians to easily benefit from this state-of-the-art technology, Deepomatic offers Augmented Worker solutions, contained in an application, allowing to instantly correct anomalies if necessary through the analysis of a simple photo.

How does it work?

Here’s how it works in practice:

I. Technicians arrive at their place of intervention, equipped with a smartphone.

II. At each stage of their intervention:

1. 1. They take a photo of their operation
   2. AI does a visual analysis of the work
      
   3. It provides feedback on the validity or otherwise of the task performed.

III. At the end of the intervention:

1. 1. Technicians complete their intervention
   2. The AI verifies the compliance of all steps of the intervention and ensures that they have been carried out properly.

What does the Augmented Worker allow you to do?

The Augmented Worker meets the requirements of the field service industry by enabling field technicians to successfully complete their tasks the first time around. Explanations in 6 points :

• The Augmented Worker allows a systematic visual control of all the key steps of an intervention.
• Artificial Intelligence accompanies and addresses its recommendations directly to technicians via the application on their smartphone.
• Each technician can control their own work on the spot thanks to the analysis of all the points of vigilance submitted by the Artificial Intelligence.
• Each of the key steps of the intervention is validated as they are carried out. Technicians thus know in real time the conformity of their work with the company’s standards.
• The entire intervention is validated by the artificial intelligence once completed.
• All the data relating to the intervention are automatically uploaded.

The Augmented Worker at the service of value creation?

It is during the intervention of the field technician that the creation of value takes place because, as the main actors of the services, they are the ones who produce the added value. In fact, field service companies, i.e. those that propose the interventions necessary for the installation and proper functioning of our private and public facilities, base their operation and profitability on two central principles. The first is the respect of the technical standards of interventions set up by the company. The second is the respect of customer expectations in terms of quality of service execution. It is the proper application of these principles that allows the performance of the service provided to be measured.

The Augmented Worker aims to support technicians in their dual responsibility of respecting internal standards and satisfying external expectations. It is a new tool that helps technicians throughout their interventions, making them more efficient and more autonomous.

Use cases and expected benefits

The case of Bouygues Telecom

To find out more about Bouygues Telecom’s use case in detail, see their Success Story.

Bouygues Telecom is fully in line with the France Très Haut Débit Plan, carrying out more than 50,000 operations per month dedicated to FTTH (Fiber To The Home) connections. However, the company has found that 40% of these operations do not comply with the company’s standards. For good reason, only 8% of the operations were controlled, randomly and retrospectively. To significantly increase the number of compliant operations, Bouygues Telecom chose to implement an Augmented Worker solution and deploy it on a large scale:

• 20 auto-control points have been defined. These points are the key moments of an intervention, which are often a source of errors and require reliability. In the case of Bouygues Télécom, this concerns the conformity of the connection, good connection to the optical termination point, etc.
• Integration of the solution with the application already used by the technicians
• A dashboard is available to management teams to monitor the progress of interventions as they are carried out.

What are the benefits?

This solution can be applied to a wide range of uses, throughout the field service sector, such as electrical panel maintenance or factory handling. Aside from this variety, benefits are common and immediate:

• Benefits for technicians:
  • Real-time help and step-by-step process validation
  • A gain in productivity as they complete their operations successfully the first time around

• Benefits for management :
  • Simplified piloting
  • Reduced supervision rate thanks to the empowerment of technicians

Indirectly, the Augmented Worker solution allows a better management of subcontractors and a better training of newcomers thanks to the support provided by artificial intelligence.

Conclusion

Augmented Worker solutions are not intended to replace technicians, on the contrary. The objective is to ensure that the profession is in control of the evolutions of the trade. They give more autonomy both to the technicians and to the company as they evolve according to their needs.

To know all about our Augmented Worker solutions, download our White Paper here.