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Meet Athena: The First Voice Assistant for the Manufacturing Industry

Jan. 22, 2021
Voice-enabled technology has transformed the way humans communicate. It’s here to stay, and now the manufacturing industry has an assistant of its own.

Athena was created to help machine tool builders provide more productive and efficient equipment to manufacturing companies that are always looking for ways to increase productivity.

Athena recognizes simple voice, text or typed commands and responds quickly and accurately by way of reports, calculations, instructions, alerts, and so much more. It’s a single interface for most machine tool and control brands.

Athena was initially launched by iTSpeeX, LLC in the spring of 2018. Since then, the voice assistant—who interacts with machine tool operators via a machine’s existing control screen or a separate display—has expanded to include over 500 commands designed to make machine operators more independent and more productive. She is able to listen to voice commands, provide instructional content, perform complex machine functions quickly and walk through vital checklists.

Machine tool OEMs have lost sales simply because the shop owner has no one capable of operating the machine. Athena immediately solves that problem, helping builders sell more machines—even in situations where skilled labor is a need.

Wearing a wireless headset connected to an on-prem computer device, the person that needs to set up, operate or maintain the machine can interact seamlessly from one machine to another, regardless of brand or control using Athena. Again, the commands do not HAVE to be given by voice, although it is often the most convenient option. Commands can be typed into a keyboard as well.

Athena can help with both simple and complex tasks, making new operators more efficient quickly and providing experienced machinists and operators with needed information. With Athena, everyone performs complex tasks quicker.

For OEMs, the OEM Toolkit provides every builder the ability to create their own stories. They can highlight the unique features of their machines, controls and GUIs in a way that separates them from the pack. As capable and powerful as many machines and controls have become, several builders lament the fact that many of these productivity-enhancing features go unused or even undiscovered. Often, finding and activating these functions can be multiple screens deep or complex to execute. But with one simple voice command, Athena brings these features to life while keeping all machine and control safety protocols in place.

While some machine tool builders offer commodity machines for the general market, others focus on specific types of products or industries. With the OEM Toolkit, each manufacturer can build features and functionality into their products by using ethnography to map the actual work of the operator. They can then see how and when the work was done to increase the impact of this interface and improve the machine and operator productivity.

In addition to the OEM Toolkit, ATHENA also has an end-user toolkit so that the shop can tailor stories and commands to its operations, including links to its internal network to access the latest prints, process or maintenance documents, and videos.

Multiplying the effectiveness of an OEM’s technical and support resources is another huge benefit Athena brings. As difficult as it is to find and retain highly skilled engineers, imagine that you could supply some of the most intimate knowledge and skills of your best engineers to the operators without them leaving your facility. On-site training is costly and can be difficult to schedule between travel, machine availability, and production requirements. If many of the things operators most commonly experience can be pre-loaded into Athena, it minimizes the need for expensive travel and time spent by seasoned and often over-booked experts.

The manufacturing industry has long been focused on improving the performance of the machine. With Athena, the focus is on improving the performance of the operator.