Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesCase study
A glimpse into the future of facility and maintenance management: A case study of augmented reality
Corporate Real Estate Journal,
6
(3),
227-244
(2017)
Abstract
Many tasks in facility management (FM) and maintenance management (MM) require informed decisions in real time on-site. This is particularly true when action is to be taken during an emergency, disaster or damage. Very often relevant documents, images and instructions are not available or not up to date, resulting in unnecessary effort and cost and sometimes wrong decisions. Augmented reality (AR) is the technology that can be exploited in some of those cases. With AR being an essential digitisation technology, 3D virtual objects can be integrated into a 3D real environment in real time. This paper gives an overview of AR technology and applications and points out possible utilisations in FM and MM. The paper describes the approach and results of the research project FMstar (Facility Management by semantic technologies and augmented reality) supported by the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy. The project, which was undertaken by a consortium of three universities and four SMEs, considers the application of AR to maintenance and commissioning of technical equipment. The focus is not only on AR but also on the modelling of virtual objects with building information modelling (BIM) technology and the representation of relevant knowledge related to the equipment by means of semantic networks. The paper is intended to encourage the stakeholders in real estate and facility management to adapt AR as an important enabling technology for the near future.
Keywords: augmented reality (AR); facility management (FM); maintenance management (MM); semantic modelling; building information modelling (BIM); mobile technologies
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Michael May has been a professor of computer sciences and facility management at the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Berlin since 1994. Before assuming his current position he was head of the FM research department at the IIEF Institute in Berlin and worked for the German Ministry of Research and Technology. He earned his PhD in mathematics in 1981 and his postdoctoral Habilitation in information technology in 1990 at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. His current research is related to FM knowledge management, gamebased learning, facility layout automation, IT integration, CAFM/IWMS, BIM, augmented reality and sustainability. He is the editor and author of several books including The Facility Manager’s Guide to Information Technology. He is a board member of the German Facility Management Association (GEFMA) and head of GEFMA’s IT (CAFM) work group. He represents GEFMA at the international level, eg at EuroFM and IFMA.
Michael Clauss is group leader for Factory Planning and Digital Factory at the chair of Factory Planning and Factory Management at Chemnitz University of Technology. He has been working in various basic and industrial research projects in the context of data and knowledge management since 2007.
Philipp Salzmann studied Facility Management at the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Berlin in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes. During his studies he supported the research project PlayFM (serious games for the computer-based knowledge transfer in facility management). Afterwards, he was engaged as a researcher in the project FMstar with a focus on the concept creation, AR technology, software usability, and testing. By now he is responsible for the topics information and communication technology (ICT) at Sybac Solar Berlin GmbH.
