This section outlines the different use cases that this companion specification addresses.

ID

UC001

Name

Items and System Relationships

Objective

As a support/commissioning engineer, I want to be able to easily see the relationships between the vision system and its items (i.e., hardware and software components of a machine)

Description

The vision system, and the items constituting it, need to specify relationships (IsConnectedTo, ControlledBy etc.) between them so additional information can be obtained.

This allows the vision system to offer different views on its composition and the application.

ID

UC002

Name

Inventory and Replacements

Objective

As a support/commissioning engineer, I want to be able to get manufacture/build information about the complete vision system and its items (components and/or machines) and to be able to inventory and/or replace of those parts.

Description

The vision system and the items constituting it, need to provide a standardized set of information that can uniquely identify them such as serial number and manufacturer. Additional optional information such as software or hardware version, configuration code, model, construction date or other user-specific names or identification information can also be provided.

This allows the user to manage the vision system in different application contexts (e.g., filtering, inventorying, finding replacements, etc.).

ID

UC003

Name

Static Maintenance Information

Objective

As a service technician I want to get static information about items (components or machines) in a vision system to obtain spare parts or detect possible incompatibilities.

Description

A service technician comes onto the vision system (possibly physically or in any case with a network connection) and tries to get an overview of things relevant to them.

This can take place on different levels. There should be a consistent interface to detect all the components and access their basic information. Then, after identifying the relevant components, additional, vendor-specific information and interfaces may be exposed.

It may be a service technician from the main vision system vendor, it could also be from a component vendor. For example, if the vision system is using highly sophisticated third-party frame grabbers or cameras which need special maintenance from the original manufacturer. They log in to the system and want to find out what items there are based on some filter criteria, like manufacturer, item type, serial number, some date, firmware/driver version, etc.

ID

UC004

Name

Dynamic Maintenance Information

Objective

As a service technician/control engineer I want to get detailed information about various aspects of the operation of the items (components or machines) in the vision system and of the vision system as a whole, to devise optimization strategies and provide service.

Description

A service technician/controls engineer comes onto the vision system (possibly physically or in any case with a network connection) and tries to get specific information about an aspect of the vision system and its items.

The exposed information can include aspects such as energy consumption, timing of various relevant operations, error conditions and calibration information and for some specific item types (e.g., Lenses, Lighting, etc.) additional information can be exposed.

The service technician/control engineer can monitor the aforementioned information for a period of time to identify performance related characteristics, which can then be used to optimize the performance of the system or to identify anomalies and perform service and maintenance activities.

ID

UC005

Name

Health Monitoring

Objective

As a maintenance/production engineer I want to get detailed information about the health of the vision system and its items (components or machines) to check the level of operability and estimate the probability of imminent degradation.

Description

A service technician/production engineer comes onto the vision system (possibly physically, in any case with a network connection) and tries to get specific information about a state of the vision system and its items.

  • The vision system and its items expose information such as the temperature, the health state, alarms and/or estimates about the item’s own state.

ID

UC006

Name

Information recording

Objective

As production engineer/ control engineer I want to monitor/retrieve information about the change of states and conditions in the vision system and its items (components and machines) over time.

Description

A production engineer/ control engineer comes onto the vision system ( usually via a network connection) and monitor/retrieve information about different aspects of the vision system and its items allowing to follow the evolution of the vision system over its lifetime in different contexts such as track statistics, processing times, health, recipe changes, software/firmware update, hardware replacements, etc.

Requirements

UC001, UC002, UC003, UC004, UC005

ID

UC007

Name

Log of maintenance records

Objective

As a service technician I want to update the system with information about what I did because that is part of the system history.

Description

As a service technician comes onto the vision system (possibly in-person, with a network connection) and monitors/retrieves service/maintenance records about different aspects of the vision system and its items, thus allowing to get historical records of events that took place during the lifetime of the machine.