Secure remote support with zero downtime through EWON®

Bonfiglioli Engineering takes customer service seriously, offering customers the assistance they need, when they need it.

Our customer service department has always worked arduously to guarantee quick intervention on the machines installed at our customer companies to resolve any malfunction and to perform necessary maintenance and service as quickly as possible. Customers being our focus, our technicians are available 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday, around the globe.

For over ten years, Bonfiglioli Engineering's customer service department has been using EWON®, a user-friendly and secure technology that lets us provide assistance remotely through a secure connection, to detect and resolve problems or malfunctions quickly and efficiently.

EWON®: A router for secure remote assistance

EWON is a router designed to guarantee maximum security. Installed on the customer’s machine that is connected to the Talk2M server (a cloud for remote access to machines), EWON uses a connection platform called eCatcher. Every connected device is registered on the eCatcher platform and assigned a unique alphanumeric access key generated by eCatcher and reserved for Bonfiglioli Engineering. This creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between the customer and us, allowing our engineers to connect to the customer’s system remotely for diagnostic or repair work while protecting against wiretapping and hacking.)

Various remote inspections and interventions can be performed using the EWON® connection:

• Emergency Assistance: in the event of an emergency or machine malfunction, our customer service technicians use EWON® to connect to the automation system in real time to check its activity, identify any problems and, if possible, take action directly on the machine to solve them. If remote analysis reveals a problem that cannot be resolved remotely, customer service can send specialized technicians to the company to intervene quickly and efficiently based on the information and data collected through EWON®.

• Automation changes: we use EWON® not just to intervene in the event of machine malfunctions, but also at the customer's request to modify the machine management software or the operator interface leading to time and cost savings.

• Machine efficiency tests and checks: EWON® is used to carry out remote testing on the machine’s condition, both under normal circumstances and after a repair, to ensure everything is in order.

• Operator training: EWON® allows us to contact machine operators directly to answer questions or concerns and to offer them remote training.

The advantages of EWON®

We can intervene remotely on machines installed anywhere around the globe and Bonfiglioli Engineering's technicians are able to provide fast and efficient service to minimize production downtime.

Remote intervention minimizes the need for on-site actions from outside technicians, resulting in both financial and time savings.

To date, our technicians have been able to resolve about 70% of our customers' problems remotely using EWON®, significantly reducing the need to send specialized personnel out to the company.

EWON® can also communicate directly with a variety of machine devices (PLC, HMI, etc.). This means that our customers can use it without requiring a specific programming platform, offering significant savings both in financial terms and from the standpoint of time dedicated to train personnel.

In the current unprecedented situation caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, this type of tool has proved to be vital to providing companies with immediate support. During the lockdown, one of our customers suffered a blackout with an electrical discharge that damaged some of the components of their machine. At the time, it would have been impossible to send out specialized technicians to resolve the problem, but our team was able to work directly on the machine using remote assistance, getting the equipment back up and running in just a few hours. Interventions like these will be even more effective in the future thanks to the use of advanced technological tools, such as special 3D glasses worn by the operator on site. They will be able to provide the technicians working remotely an extremely precise view of the machine to help them guide the operator in carrying out the repairs.

Experience has shown that remote service systems are extremely advantageous for companies. That is why Bonfiglioli Engineering began equipping all the machines with EWON® since 2019. We offer our customers remote assistance free of charge for the first year. It is then available by subscription or on an “on-call” basis. The device inside our machines offers customers an innovative tool offering the assistance they need, when they need it.