Patrol inspections of equipment and instruments are essential for facility maintenance. However visual inspections, undeniably, place a significant burden on inspectors. The key challenge is to reduce this burden while digitizing atypical analog information within the equipment to improve efficiency.

Japan's LiLz Gauge and LiLz Guard, developed by LiLz, address this challenge. Designed specifically for maintenance, these products streamline daily patrol inspections. Let's take a closer look at their key features and benefits.

A Cloud Service for Remote Visual Inspections in Equipment Maintenance

We are the Thai subsidiary of Shinko Corporation, a member of the Kobe Steel Group. In addition to handling steel products, non-ferrous products, welding materials, and machinery, we are also focused on improving on-site productivity and efficiency, ensuring safety through maintenance, and building factory automation (FA) systems. Through our daily operations, we have come to recognize the various challenges faced in the maintenance activities of the manufacturing industry. Even in Japan, many sites still rely on visual inspections. According to a survey conducted by LiLz, based on the Common Building Maintenance Specifications issued by Japan's MLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism), 87% of inspections are still dependent on visual checks. Many locations face challenges in securing power and network connectivity, which has slowed the adoption of IoT. With limited personnel available for inspections, routine checks are often delayed. However, inspections conducted less than once a day provide insufficient data for informed decision-making. Patrols and maintenance activities during severe weather, such as typhoons, are demanding, and the transfer of maintenance skills to the next generation is also facing challenges. Contributing to the resolution of these challenges is , a product from LiLz that we began selling in June 2020. This cloud service uses low-power IoT cameras and machine learning to easily enable the remote monitoring of visual patrol inspections for analog meters and other instruments. The system operates without the need for a power supply, wiring, or network installation, with a battery life of 3 years while capturing images three times a day. Since it runs solely on LTE, there’s no need to secure an additional gateway, and it can also be installed outdoors. LiLz Gauge supports a wide range of instruments, automatically reading multiple meters from a single image. By using APIs, users can obtain data such as "instrument readings" and "images captured by the camera," allowing integration with existing equipment management systems.