OREANDA-NEWS. June 06, 2016. Honeywell’s Vocollect Maintenance and Inspection Solution recently won the 2016 Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) Technology Competition, which was sponsored by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences and the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Maintenance.  

The competition was designed to introduce new technologies to the U.S. Department of Defense in an effort to sustain material readiness at reduced costs.

he Vocollect Maintenance and Inspection Solution (M&I) comprises voice-directed work technology for inspection technicians. Rather than recording findings on paper and manually entering them into a database, the interaction between technicians and the system is carried out by voice while the system is updated automatically. With a voice-directed, hands-free and eyes-free inspection process, workers eliminate skipped steps, make fewer errors, are more productive and have higher job satisfaction. The voice-directed solution eliminates the post-inspection manual data entry process and facilitates compliance with various inspection processes.

Honeywell’s technology received the award for its ability to be easily adopted into current standard operating procedures. During the finalist presentations, the Honeywell team described a future where voice M&I can be adopted for field inspections on military equipment such as deployed naval vessels.

Lufthansa Technik AG is currently using the Honeywell technology for civil aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and modification services. The solution helped reduce or eliminate many tedious written documentation tasks, which would typically account for nearly 50 percent of a technician’s working shift. In addition, Honeywell implemented the voice technology for its own aircraft engine maintenance, repair and overhaul operations. 

In April, the Vocollect M&I Solution was included in a group of six finalists.  As a panelist at the CTMA annual partners and integrated projects meeting, Matthew Nichols, product marketing manager, Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions, presented the Vocollect Maintenance & Inspection Solution.

The theme for the May 12 competition, which took place at the Lockheed Martin Center for Innovation in Suffolk, Virginia, was “Streamlined Innovation.” 

The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, the largest cross industry collaborative Research & Development consortium in North America, is dedicated to driving innovation in commercial, defense, robotics and environmentally sustainable manufacturing.