Third, they focus support on the least experienced shift, not the strongest. Your best engineers will cope with most problems. The real risk sits with the newer technician on nights, facing an unfamiliar fault alone. AI-assisted troubleshooting can help here by pulling up similar past faults, the fixes that worked and the relevant manual pages in seconds. It can’ t replace experience, and it shouldn’ t make safety decisions on its own, but it does mean a newer engineer isn’ t starting from scratch.
A checklist for engineering managers
• Track mean time to repair by shift as well as by site. The gaps will show you where support is needed.
Automation will keep advancing, and it should. But manuals only capture procedure: steps, settings, part numbers. What keeps a line running is tribal knowledge, such as the sound of a failing bearing or the smell of a motor running hot. Record those observations against the machine, and the newest technician on nights can draw on decades of experience.
• Before signing off any automation project, name who will maintain it and how
• List the machines on site that only one person knows how to fix and start there.
• Make recording a fault and its fix take less than a minute using mobile technology
• Pair experienced engineers with newer staff on complex jobs, and capture what gets shared www. ultimo. com
16 MACHINERY, AUTOMATION, CONTROL & ENGINEERING