It took a whole range of Maier's innovations to provide the platform for a flexible measurement and diagnostics system that is based on powerful hardware and software modules, and can be used for many types of plants and tasks. "Flexibility plays a crucial role in services for industrial plants," says Maier. Modeling, modularization, and reusability are therefore all key factors when designing and realizing services along with the hardware and software on which they are based.

As a rule, identifying the cause of a malfunction in an industrial plant is a complex business. Any one of hundreds of drives or sensors could be at fault and trigger a chain reaction. One solution is to employ a system capable of automatically searching through the flood of signaling processes in order to locate the problem. Given the size and heterogeneity of many plants, e.g. rolling mills and paper mills, it is usually necessary to employ distributed measurement systems, which are able to record several signals simultaneously. When using such systems, however, the actual time of the measurement must be determined to an accuracy of a few microseconds. As the clocks in the various measurement components distributed throughout the plants are not synchronous to a sufficient degree it was necessary to devise a means of converting the various times at which the measurements were made according to a common basis. Maier came up with special algorithms to solve the problem.

These algorithms can be employed for a variety of purposes, including requirement-based maintenance. "Companies are moving away from regular maintenance intervals, because it's generally time-consuming and imprecise," Maier explains. In order to identify which machinery, drives, pumps, or other components are showing signs of wear, suitable diagnostic units are now installed from the very beginning or subsequently integrated. On the basis of the data thus collected, these systems can determine the maintenance requirements of individual components in good time.

With the development of a system for the automatic creation of hyperlinks for websites, Maier has also turned his attention to a completely different service area. Many companies provide extensive help systems and technical documentation online. Maier has devised a system that works with keywords. Whenever a user clicks one of these keywords in a document, it automatically creates an up-to-date list of all the documents also containing information on this topic.

"Rather than looking for solutions to individual problems, I’m interested in procedures that can be used in completely different areas," says Maier describing his approach. As industry becomes increasingly specialized with highly individualized plants, this is, in his opinion, the key to delivering successful industrial services that provide wide-ranging optimization.

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