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The performance of your manufacturing equipment can make or break your business. Understanding the nuances of maintenance costs and operational efficiency is essential to staying competitive in today's market. The maintenance dashboard plays a critical role in providing the insights needed to enhance manufacturing efficiency and reduce costs. Performance Assessment The first question every plant manager should ask is, "How well is your manufacturing equipment performing?" A maintenance dashboard offers real-time visibility into the performance metrics of your machinery. It tracks key indicators such as unplanned downtime, and failure frequency. This data is invaluable in identifying areas that require attention, enabling timely interventions to prevent costly breakdowns. Cost Analysis Understanding the various components of maintenance costs is vital for effective resource allocation. The maintenance dashboard breaks down costs associated with labor, machinery, spare parts, and external contractors for each piece of equipment in the factory. Armed with this knowledge, plant managers can make informed decisions about where to allocate resources for maximum impact on efficiency and cost reduction. Operational Efficiency Is your operation running efficiently, or is your company bleeding money? The ability to address inquiries such as identifying equipment in the factory that experiences frequent idle and unplanned downtime, those requiring costly spare parts for maintenance, ones consuming a significant portion of your workforce's time, and those negatively affecting the quality of your products, among others. Kiami's dashboard offers a thorough summary of your operation's efficiency levels, enabling you to identify areas in need of optimization and implement short-term/long-term corrective measures. This understanding is vital for maintaining competitiveness and securing profitability. Minimizing Breakdowns Equipment breakdowns can have a significant impact on resources and productivity. The maintenance dashboard empowers maintenance teams to proactively address potential issues before they escalate, highlight returning failures, and machine weaknesses, and schedule interventions, minimizing downtime and associated costs. Technical and Operational Expertise and Collaboration The level of professionalism and expertise within your maintenance, technical support and operational teams is a critical factor in maintaining efficient operations. Kiami’s maintenance dashboard aids in identifying gaps in knowledge and skills, allowing for targeted training and development efforts. Additionally, it facilitates seamless collaboration of expertise across teams and manufacturing sites, ensuring that specialized knowledge is effectively leveraged for optimal results. Setting Priorities and Taking Action Knowing where you stand is the foundation for process improvements. Kiami’s maintenance dashboard provides the actionable insights needed to set priorities, focus efforts and resources, and take corrective actions. Without these key performance indicators (KPIs), a business is essentially "blind," unable to make informed decisions to drive operational excellence. Conclusion In the words of management guru Peter Drucker, "If you can't measure it, you cannot improve it." Kiami’s maintenance dashboard is the cornerstone in the pursuit of manufacturing efficiency and cost reduction. By providing real-time data on equipment performance, cost breakdowns, operational efficiency, and expertise within your workforce, it equips plant managers, maintenance teams and operational teams with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions and drive continuous improvement. Embracing this invaluable tool is not just a choice; it's a strategic necessity for any forward-thinking manufacturing operation. Below are some of the analytical charts featured on Kiami's dashboard. Kiami also offers additional analytical charts that concentrate on other aspects, including SLA (Service Level Agreement) and beyond.

Background Flex is an American Singaporean multinational electronics contract manufacturer. It is the third-largest global electronics manufacturing service (EMS), with 200,000 employees in 80 manufacturing sites around the world. Assembly line operators, maintenance technicians, test equipment technicians, process engineers, and other teams’ daily work involve a lot of troubleshooting, root-cause-analysis, and failures fixing, along with routine maintenance activities such as system calibration, preventive maintenance, process control, and predictive maintenance. The Challenges Here are the main challenges Flex teams have pointed: Too often failures’ repair process is inefficient, involves a lot of trial and error, rarely includes proper knowledge sharing that ends up in long downtimes and poor quality, expensive rework, and scrap costs. Although most of the manufacturing equipment and processes are common in all the manufacturing sites, knowledge preservation and sharing inside the technical teams and between the different sites is rarely used and ineffective. Flex uses monitoring software to collect and analyze manufacturing equipment data in real-time. When an abnormal indication exists, a line operator or a technical expert is called to identify the root cause and provide a proper correction. Unfortunately, there was no standard resolution for each indication type in the various manufacturing sites, although they use the same machinery and processes. About 20-50% of the service calls from the operation teams to technical support and engineering result from operation faults that could be avoided, while reducing unnecessary downtimes and failures, and reducing technicians’ workload. Technical information such as electrical schemas, maintenance manuals, maintenance procedures, spare parts data, and such, are spread in various locations and systems. When a technical member needs them while working on his/ her tasks, this information is not so accessible, or getting it is time-consuming. Cumbersome, non-intuitive maintenance management software is used to manage maintenance teams’ activities. The Solution Kiami’s FastTtroubleshoot was optimized to provide a remarkable solution for all the challenges above, and much more. The system is literally transforming the way technical and operation teams repair failures and collaborate knowledge, experience, and best practices, across sites and the entire supply chain. When a manufacturing engineer, technician, or line operator tackles a failure, the system scans the knowledgebase for similar failures, and provides diagnostic and repair recommendations, that have been optimized by an optimization algorithm, to minimize repair time and spare parts costs. All the accumulated experience lies there. Making it so users do not need to “reinvent the wheel”, each time they tackle something slightly new. All the necessary technical information such as diagrams, procedures, manuals, photos, and videos can be opened with one click. In more complex failures, where decision trees can simplify the diagnostics process, the user can run the Expert Wizard, and follow its guideline. The user can key in symptoms, error codes, or other process characteristics, and the system generates recommendations based on that input. Integrating the expert system into the knowledge base has proven to be a game-changer, cutting repair times and waste dramatically. A powerful analytics tool helps to highlight process trends, products’ weaknesses, or other anomalies that require intervention, monitoring, preventative, or improvement actions. A simple and very intuitive maintenance management module completes Kiami’s suite, with all the required maintenance functionalities, including equipment, spare parts, and inventory management, preventive maintenance tasks’ scheduling and reporting, and more. This module has a great synergy with the advanced troubleshooting and knowledge management system elements. The Benefits The system was implemented in 2020 in EMEA region (Europe and Middle East), showing a tremendous impact on the manufacturing teams’ daily work. According to Ofer Klein, Flex Israel OPEX director, “I saw many troubleshooting solutions in the last years, but Kiami’s solution is on another level.” Here are the main benefits that have been observed: During the first implementation that included around 50 technicians and line operators in Flex main site in Israel, they observed massive cost savings due to reducing breakdowns' repair times and technical manpower. After a while, it was extended to additional teams and eight manufacturing sites across Europe. Cutting materials waste, poor-quality, and returning failures were observed anywhere. Excellent collaboration between technical teams in different manufacturing sites, while spreading experience and best practices. Shorter and more effective new employees’ training and qualification process. Simple, easy-to-use maintenance management functionalities.

Background Palziv is an international manufacturer of cross-linked, closed-cell polyethylene foams, providing R&D and production solutions with complete logistics support and customer service to markets in North America, Europe, and Asia. Experienced engineers and technicians are responsible for the maintenance activities and failures’ troubleshooting in the Palziv’s manufacturing sites. The Challenges Here are the main challenges Palziv’s teams have pointed: Too often failures’ repair process is inefficient, involves a lot of trial and error, rarely includes proper knowledge sharing, which ends up in long downtimes, materials waste, and poor quality that can kill the bottom line. Several experienced engineers and technicians are going to retire and leave the company in the coming years. The knowledge and “know-how” that they keep “in their heads” is huge, and there is a high risk that important knowledge will be lost with them. Technical information such as electrical schemas, maintenance manuals, maintenance procedures, spare parts data, and such, are spread in various locations and systems. When a technical member needs them while working on his/ her tasks, this information is not so accessible, or getting it is time-consuming. The Solution Kiami’s FastTtroubleshoot was optimized to provide a remarkable solution for all the challenges above, and much more. The system is literally transforming the way technical and operation teams repair failures and collaborate knowledge, experience, and best practices, across sites and the entire supply chain. When a manufacturing engineer, technician, or line operator tackles a failure, the system scans the knowledgebase for similar failures, and provides diagnostic and repair recommendations, that have been optimized by an optimization algorithm, to minimize repair time and spare parts costs. All the accumulated experience lies there. Making it so users do not need to “reinvent the wheel”, each time they tackle something slightly new. All the necessary technical information such as diagrams, procedures, manuals, photos, and videos can be opened with one click. In more complex failures, where decision trees can simplify the diagnostics process, the user can run the Expert Wizard, and follow its guideline. The user can key in symptoms, error codes, or other process characteristics, and the system generates recommendations based on that input. Integrating the expert system into the knowledge base has proven to be a game-changer, cutting repair times and waste dramatically. A powerful analytics tool helps to highlight process trends, products’ weaknesses, or other anomalies that require intervention, monitoring, preventative, or improvement actions. The Benefits The system was implemented in 2019, showing a tremendous impact on the maintenance engineers' and technicians’ daily work. According to Elon Shaked, Palziv’s maintenance manager, “Since FastTroubleshoot was implemented, it is much easier to fix failures. Failures’ repairs do not tend to complicate any more, and the repair time is usually shorter. The implementation process was a wonderful process that made our team more professional and much more collaborative.” Here are the main benefits that have been observed: Faster and more efficient failures’ troubleshooting process thus cutting downtimes, materials waste, poor-quality and returning failures. Highly effective technical knowledge and best-practices collaboration among the technical team members, thus preserving experienced employees’ “know-how” before leaving the company. Shorter and more effective new employees’ training and qualification process. Improved team members’ professionalism.

If you are working in a manufacturing company, the simple answer is yes, definitely yes, but yet there are several criteria that can help you to evaluate how much a knowledge management solution can contribute to your company, and what are the potential benefits from such implementation. Please review the following questions and select the ones that usually reflect your experience. · Are your manufacturing breakdowns due to process or equipment failures expensive? ·Does your failures’ repair process usually involve a lot of trial and error and rarely reuse previous workers’ experience on similar failures? · Can you correlate long downtimes or inefficient failure resolution with expensive materials waste, manufacturing delays, poor quality of service? · Do you face a big repair time variance among your support teams while repairing the same failure? · Do you feel that your manufacturing support teams many times “reinvent the wheel” while trying to repair failures? · Are there a lot of calls from your manufacturing operators to your support teams, to resolve failures that can be easily repaired by the operational teams, if they had the right guidelines in place (due to operational or setup errors, simple maintenance problems and the like)? · Is there a lack of methodical approach to an effective troubleshooting knowledge sharing and best practices, spreading inside your teams and across the teams? · Do you feel that an effective knowledge sharing of troubleshooting experience and best-practices between your manufacturing sites can boost your teams’ professionalism? · Is your spare-parts usage while repairing equipment breakdowns expensive? · Does your support teams’ repair process optimize spare-parts consumption? · Is there a long learning curve to become an effective support worker (months to years)? · Do you suffer from a severe knowledge loss due to experienced workers' departure? If you that more than 3 bullets well describe your operation, your company clearly needs a smart knowledge management solution for efficient troubleshooting. KIAMI provides smart AI-based knowledge management for efficient industrial troubleshooting, maintenance management, and quality management software. Contact us today to schedule a demo.

KIAMI's FASTtroubleshoot is a top-class troubleshooting and knowledge management software that was implemented in one of the largest pharmaceutical companies. This article describes the use and benefits of the system in one of their highly automated distribution centers, with a storage capacity of 72,000 pallets. The warehouse includes a complex conveyor system that moves the stock into and out from the automated storage areas, automated cranes, lifts, picking machines, shrinking machines, contour check, shuttles, pallet changers, and other automated equipment, controlled by a Warehouse Control System (WCS) and a network of PLCs. A Warehouse Management System (WMS) manages all the warehouse activities such as transferring materials to the company's manufacturing sites, receiving and putting them into storage, packing finished goods for orders, and shipping them to customers. The WMS sends these tasks to the WCS that transform them into physical stock movements and warehouse actions. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system manages all order aspects and financial activities relating to these stock movements into and out of this distribution center. This distribution center is working around the clock, supplying stock to the company's sites and the company's customers on real short notice. Picking and shipping stock can be divided into many sub-processes involving the ERP, WMS, and WCS systems and several automated types of equipment such as cranes, conveyors, picking stations, checking stations, weighing stations, printing machines, closing machines, which works sequentially one after the other. A system malfunction or equipment breakdown can stop all the processes and in some cases shut down the automated warehouse activities. It is very important in such cases to provide fast and reliable resolution. It is also important to enable the warehouse logistics teams to handle by themselves a wide variety of failures that can be fixed quickly. How FASTtroubleshoot help the teams? The system was implemented a short time after the installation of a new WCS system and automatic picking equipment. A tremendous impact was observed, shortening the ramp-up period of the new systems, minimizing the unplanned downtimes, and reducing the learning curve of all logistics, IT, and maintenance teams. FASTtroubleshoot is used by the following teams' in the warehouse: Logistics teams IT WMS, WCS, and ERP applications' support (level 1 and 2) Equipment maintenance and engineering teams When one of these teams' members handles a system malfunction or failure, FASTtroubleshoot provides all the necessary information for a fast, high-quality fix. He/ She goes over possible reasons until the root cause is detected, and a best-practice repair procedure is provided. The users can access the system on the warehouse floor, with their tablets, laptops, or mobile devices. FASTtroubleshoot stimulates knowledge sharing within the team members, and between the teams, increasing the professionalism of all, while enabling a faster learning curve of new employees, and minimizing the loss of highly skilled workers that leaves the company or the support team. The impact on the bottom line is very dramatic: Cut-down failures' repair time and automation downtimes by 50%. The system helps the operational teams to fix a wider range of failures by themselves, before calling maintenance, IT, or other support teams, while reducing the calls for support by 40%, and reducing support teams' workload. Preserve and share technical best practices and experience inside and across teams Provides better operational and maintenance analytics, revealing equipment deterioration and hidden failures. New employees learning curve is shortened by 30%.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing includes a wide range of machineries such as blenders, mixers, and other equipment. System malfunctions and failure-related costs can be tremendous. KIAMI's FASTtroubleshoot is a top-class failures troubleshooting software that helps to provide fast, high-quality resolution, cutting down repair time and reducing manufacturing costs. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is divided into two major stages: the production of the active ingredient or drug (primary processing) and secondary processing, the conversion of the active drugs into the final products suitable for administration. The process of drug manufacturing can be broken down into a series of unit operations, such as milling, granulation, coating, tablet pressing, and others, under which the starting materials change their physical characteristics before the final dosage form is produced. Pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment includes a wide range of machinery such as blenders, mixers, granulators, coaters, tablet press, tablets filling, capsule filling, liquid filling, tube filling, labeling, printing, blister packaging, laboratory & quality control equipment, and many more. Equipment and system malfunctions and failures can cause a huge waste of money. In such cases, it is essential to provide fast, high-quality resolution. How can FASTtroubleshoot help? The biggest impact of FASTtroubleshoot is on the ongoing operation of these manufacturing processes. When a user from engineering, maintenance, IT, or operation handles system malfunction or failure, FASTtroubleshoot provides all the necessary information to enable fast, high-quality resolution. The user can drill down to the relevant malfunctioned process/ sub-process step and go over possible failure reasons, based on failure characteristics, symptoms, and error messages. He can run documented test procedures until the root cause is detected or can use documented repair procedures to provide effective best-practice treatment and run the expert wizard to review detailed expert guidelines. The user interface was optimized for tablets and mobile devices, using touch screen navigation, at the manufacturing floor. The system provides the following benefits: Cuts-down failures repair time. In some complex failures from few hours to few minutes downtimes. Improved manufacturing processes' quality, reduced material waste due to long downtimes or returning failures, reduced manufacturing delays, and increased throughput/ utilization. It enables operational teams to resolve by themselves a wider range of failures, which previously have been resolved by maintenance, engineering, or IT. It is extremely useful when support team members are not available or not on shift, allowing a quick and convenient method to resolve the issue. It enables to preserve organization accumulated knowledge and spread best-practice diagnostics and repair procedures inside teams, between teams, and between sites. It enables to shorten new workers' learning curve and improve the professionalism of all. It enables to shorten ramp-up and lower risk while introducing a new process, equipment, information system, or product. Manufacturing teams that can gain a lot of benefits from this system: Manufacturing line operators Equipment maintenance and engineering Laboratory tooling maintenance Process Engineers Quality engineers IT MES, WMS, and IT infrastructure support FASTtroubleshoot stimulates knowledge sharing within support team members, and between the different support and operation teams across the company while pushing to operational excellence.

The global electronics industry is highly competitive, innovative, and fast-changing. With short product cycles, is typical to employ a just-in-time production model. Manufacturing systems malfunctions and failure-related costs can be tremendous. KIAMI's FASTtroubleshoot is a top-class failures troubleshooting software that helps to provide fast, high-quality resolution, cutting down repair time and reducing manufacturing costs. The electronics industry is generally comprised of two groups of firms: component suppliers and electronics assembly firms. Component suppliers firms include manufacturers of passive components, semiconductor components, printed circuit boards (PCB), display components, and more. This industry includes highly automated equipment such as boules or bare wafers, machines for the manufacture of masks and reticles; assembling semiconductor devices or integrated circuits; lifting, handling, loading, and unloading equipment; Instruments for inspecting or checking semiconductor wafers or devices, photo masks or reticles used in manufacturing semiconductor devices. The electronics assembly industry includes highly automated equipment such as components placement machines (chip shooters and IC placers), solder paste printing machines, reflow ovens, wave soldering machines, loading equipment, PCB conveyors, and various test equipment such as automatic test equipment (ATE), automatic optical inspection (AOI) and others. The manufacturing processes in the electronics industry are very accurate, high volume, and characterized by a controlled environment. Machines malfunctions or failures can generate many defected products, materials scrap, manufacturing delays, high repair costs, low products reliability, products fields' failures, and more. The related quality costs are huge. In such cases, it is critical to provide fast, high-quality resolution. How can FASTtroubleshoot boost electronics manufacturing? The biggest impact of FASTtroubleshoot is on the ongoing operation of these manufacturing processes. When engineering, maintenance, IT, or operation user handles system malfunction or failure, FASTtroubleshoot provides all the necessary information to enable fast, high-quality resolution. He can drill down to the relevant malfunctioned process/ sub-process step and go over possible failure reasons, based on failure characteristics, symptoms, and error messages. He can run documented test procedures until the root cause is detected or use documented repair procedures to provide effective and best-practice treatment and run the expert wizard to review detailed guidelines. The user interface was optimized for tablets and mobile devices, using touch screen navigation, at the manufacturing floor. The diagram on the right describes a real-life troubleshooting example in an electronics assembly line. In printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing, fiducial marks allow SMT placement equipment to accurately locate and place parts on boards. Immediately after a printed board (PCB) enters into a components placement machine, its fiducial marks are scanned before the placement begins. Fiducial marks no read error is one of the common ones. Line's operator that tackles such error drills down into the relevant sub-process, in that example - Fuji placement machine > Fiducials read sub-process. Doing so reveals all the possible reasons for such failure. Possible fiducial no-read failure reasons are displayed in the right table. The line operator follows the checks required to identify the root cause until it is identified and resolved or calls the relevant support team to proceed with the investigation. As it can be seen in the example, FASTtroubleshoot provides the following benefits: Cuts-down failures repair time. In some complex failures from few hours to few minutes downtimes. It enables operational teams to resolve by themselves a wider range of failures, which previously have been resolved by maintenance, engineering, or IT. It is extremely useful when support team members are not available or not on shift, allowing a quick and convenient method to resolve the issue. It enables to preserve organization accumulated knowledge and spread best-practice diagnostics and repair procedures inside teams, among teams, and between sites. It enables to shorten new workers' learning curve and raises professionalism level of all. It enables to shorten ramp-up and reduce the risk while introducing a new process, equipment, information system, or product. Improved manufacturing processes' quality, reduced material waste due to long downtimes or returning failures, reduced manufacturing delays, and increased throughput/ utilization. FASTtroubleshoot stimulates knowledge sharing across the company and pushes all stakeholders towards operational excellence. Among the teams that can gain the maximum benefits from this system: Manufacturing line operators SMT Equipment programmers Machines maintenance staff Process Engineers Products' defects analyzers and repair technicians Test equipment (ATE) developers and operators Automatic inspection equipment (AOI) programmers and operators IT MES, ERP, and WMS information systems and infrastructure teams How can FASTtroubleshoot help electronics development and NPI? Another important use of the FASTtroubleshoot platform is to support new products design, development, and introduction (NPI) processes. Any organization that deals with such development phases have many employees that gain very important experience on how to do things right the first time, minimizing development, prototype, and pilot builds' manufacturing ramp-up errors. FASTtroubleshoot is a perfect platform to document such best-practice guidelines and reuse this accumulated knowledge in development projects. It can hold such guidelines on different aspects of project development such as design for manufacturing (DFM), design for testability (DFT), design for assembly (DFA), and more. Dynamic checklists can be used before each project step and before any prototype build, contributing to the overall process improvement.

KIAMI's FASTtroubleshoot is an advanced knowledge-based support system for fast detection and repair of system malfunctions and failures. The system enables the rapid enhancement of the troubleshooting knowledge base, covering an extensive range of information required for problem-solving, such as known failures, symptoms, error messages, test procedures, possible root causes, and their repair procedures. The expert wizard helps to transform complex decision trees into a list of easy-to-follow expert guidelines. FASTtroubleshoot KM support system “If I had 60 minutes to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes defining it, and 5 minutes solving it.” Albert Einstein Organization knowledge can be categorized to: Tactic: more personal, experiential, context-specific, and hard to formalize and is generally in the heads of individuals and teams. Explicit: can easily be written down and codified, such as user manuals, drawings, functional design, configuration documents, and more. FASTtroubleshoot encompasses both types to enable fast enhancement of the troubleshooting knowledge base, covering an extensive range of information that is required for problem-solving: Visual presentation of all processes and sub-processes covered by all support teams List of all known failures, their characteristics, symptoms, error messages, or any related documentation List of all known failure reasons/ root-cause and their diagnostics and repair procedures When a support user is called to handle system malfunction/ failure, FASTtroubleshoot provides all the necessary information to enable fast, high-quality resolution. He can drill down to the relevant malfunctioned process/ sub-process step and review the possible failure reasons, based on failure characteristics, symptoms, and error messages. He can run test procedures and expert wizard advice until the root cause of the failure is detected. FASTtroubleshoot helps to preserve and utilize this accumulated knowledge to provide effective best-practice repair treatment. Why is it so important to support users? It guides them to acquire the required information to gain a complete picture of the malfunction/ failure. Missing information can lead to costly detours by spending time searching in the wrong directions. Key information on the failure can narrow down the possible failure reasons and thereby reduce the time spent to detect the root cause. Provides test and diagnostics procedures when existing. This can include step-by-step diagnostic guidelines, database or system queries, diagnostic process flow, test tools, or any other documentation that can help the user to quickly identify the root cause of the failure. It displays a shortlist of possible failure reasons, which is sorted according to its occurrence to optimize the diagnostic steps. Repair procedures become increasingly important when it is complicated or there is a risk for inadequate or incomplete repair. These procedures can be followed by related documentation, such as maintenance diagrams, repair sheets, system queries, work instructions, and more. What are the expected benefits? Support and maintenance impact: Cuts-down repair time and unplanned downtimes Improved systems and equipment availability and throughput Improved manufacturing processes and products quality Reduced returning failures, process delay, and material scrap Knowledge Collaboration and Sharing impact: Support users can learn and share best-practice treatment across the company Reduced new workers' learning curve and improved support professionalism Operation teams can handle a wider range of problems that have been handled in the past by maintenance, engineering, or IT Breaks-down knowledge silos and encourage knowledge sharing cross-over teams and sites

The modern manufacturing environment presents new challenges for engineering, operation, maintenance, IT, and other support teams. Without a solid knowledge-based support system, the process suffers from some key limitations that result in manufacturing delays, poor quality, high maintenance costs, and the like, which can cause a huge waste of money. Some of the challenges are listed below. Failures repair time and equipment downtime is too often much longer than anticipated Too often failures' repair time is much longer than it should if best-practices-based repair procedures were used. Failures repair time variation among support team members is huge. Sometimes it takes hours for one engineer, while another one can repair the same failure in a few minutes. Longer repair time usually yields to long equipment downtime, scrap materials, and a lot of waste. Failure diagnostics consumes most of the repair time The time spent by support users on failure diagnosis consumes most of the overall repair time, with an average of 60-80% of the total repair time. As the manufacturing system becomes more complex, this portion increased. More than one way to detect failure root-cause A support team member can follow several testing procedures until the root cause is identified. Too often the sequence of the testing/ diagnostics steps is not optimal. Carrying it out in the right order can dramatically reduce the diagnostics process and as a result, decrease the overall repair time. Moreover, in many incidents, the support worker doesn't gather all the required information on the failure, which can narrow down the possible root cause list. Reducing this list from 9 possible reasons to 3 for example can reduce the diagnostics time by 66%. Reinvent the wheel again and again Most system failures have already occurred in the past, and there is already some experience within the organization on how to effectively deal with them. Knowledge sharing between support team members is not performed effectively, resulting in many cases of "reinventing the wheel", each time a support worker tackles a failure that he specifically didn't resolve in the past, or doesn't remember how to handle effectively. Exposing support users to other team members' experiences can help them to provide best-practice treatment. In a highly automated distribution center, which serves one of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations, a specific automation equipment failure caused more than 3 hours of downtime. A "well-cooked" diagnostics procedure was documented in Kiami's smart solution, and the repair time of the same failure was reduced to a few minutes. Higher support level members deal with simple failures Many times higher support level workers (such as maintenance or engineering) are called to handle simple failures that can be easily detected and resolved by the operational team. In an electronics assembly plant, production line operators used to call maintenance to fix machine placement failures, caused by a bent vacuum placement nozzle. Since maintenance team members were occasionally occupied dealing with other failures, or not on-site during the night shift, repairing such failures took a long time, which lead to production downtime. A simple documented testing and repair procedure enabled line operators to detect and fix such failures very quickly, avoiding unnecessary downtime. Knowledge sharing climate/ culture Although knowledge sharing between support team members is essential, in reality, this is not always the case. Too often there are team members who retain their unique knowledge and experience to themselves in order to retain a "competitive advantage" over others. It is very difficult to encourage all team members to openly share their experiences to the benefit of all. Even when the motivation for knowledge sharing exists, it is often not done effectively, leaving "silos of knowledge" trapped in the heads of a few. Only a systematic knowledge-sharing methodical approach, with proper incentive to do so, can improve the organization's knowledge-sharing climate and leverage support teams to a higher level of performance. The experienced and skilled worker that leaves the company Sometimes a very experienced, skilled support worker, who retains a great deal of knowledge in his mind, leaves the company. His experience "goes" with him, leaving knowledge "holes" in the team. Sometimes it takes months to recover from such losses, and the related costs are high. Systematic documentation of best practice failures treatment ensures that such accumulated knowledge remains in the company, thereby minimizing the loss. New Support Team Member Learning Curve is Long It takes months until a new support team member can effectively handle system failures. Too often, new team members acquire sufficient skills when they gain this experience by themselves. Documentation of best-practice failures treatment enables team members to learn from other team member experience, whilst reducing the learning curve of new team members and increasing all members' professionalism and skills. How can smart AI-based knowledge management software boost support teams' effectiveness? Such software can boost manufacturing support teams' effectiveness by enabling a much more efficient failures repair process and a systematic knowledge collaboration and sharing platform across the company. Some of the essential benefits are: Cuts-down failures repair time. In some complex failures from a few hours to a few minutes, resulting in reduced downtimes and manufacturing delays. Improved manufacturing efficiency and quality, reduced material waste due to long downtimes or returning failures, and increased yield, throughput, and utilization. It enables to preserve organization accumulated knowledge and spread best-practice diagnostics and repair procedures inside teams, between teams, and manufacturing sites. It enables operational teams to resolve by themselves a wider range of failures, which previously have been resolved by maintenance, engineering, or IT. It is extremely useful when support team members are not available or not on shift, allowing a quick resolution. It enables to shorten new workers' learning curve, minimize the loss as a result of experienced worker that leaves the team and raises professionalism level of all. It enables to shorten ramp-up and reduce the risk while introducing a new process, equipment, information system, or product. KIAMI provides smart AI-based knowledge management for efficient industrial troubleshooting, maintenance management, and quality management software. Learn more in: www.kiami-solutions.com