The Troisdorf software company dawin gmbh was awarded the 2012 MAINTAINER award for its speech-controlled mobile data recording solution, dawin checkMaster, in the special innovation category.

dawin faced a large number of candidates and won over the jury mainly thanks to the high level of innovation and the practical relevance of its solution. The awarding of the coveted “Oscar for maintenance” took place on 22 March at the MAINDAYS 2012 in Berlin.

Checklists and forms are an integral part of maintenance. These forms, however, are mostly processed at the start and/or at the end of the maintenance task. This is to the detriment of the available maintenance and repair time.

The innovative software solution, dawin checkMaster with speech-recognition, solves this problem. Time spent doing paperwork is reduced considerably leaving more time for the actual job of maintenance and repairs. Paper lists are no longer needed at all, and it’s no longer necessary to deal with tedious data entry using a keyboard. Companies can design the forms how they like and can choose to use speech-control on a PDA, for example. Particularly in dirty environments, such as on machines, this solution simplifies the data recording process by making use of speech commands. Data can also be recorded hands-free in noisy environments thanks to a headset. Positive side-effect: The hands remain free, while the PDA is safely stowed away in the coat pocket or in a holster.

The benefits of the dawin checkMaster with speech-control are:

• the record templates can be adapted to company-specific requirements;
• data can be recorded online or offline;
• mobile devices with additional functions like telephony, RFID, barcode reading, camera etc. can be used;
• it is possible to record data hands-free;
• all relevant data can be recorded at the same time as the actual maintenance task;
• transfer errors and redundant data is avoided;
• The recording system is stand-alone, and can be integrated into the existing IT systems.

The system is based on user-independent voice-recognition and doesn’t require any time-consuming recognition or learning phase by the user. Flexible speech synthesis can, without the need for programming, provide the user’s chosen content as voice output.

dawin checkMaster was designed as a platform for mobile data recording. Since almost all mobile tasks can be done in one step, unified device and process standards in the company can be more effectively adhered to. The mobile lists and the input types can be designed freely without the needs for any programming time by the user. In addition, the entire range of technical possibilities (image recording, voice recording, task input fields, signature fields, integration of additional modules such as mobile CAD etc.) can be fully exploited for mobile data recording. The recorded data is available in a database format and can be integrated into the IT environment of the company in Excel or using an interface. Thanks to the user-friendly design of the program interface, the software is intuitive to use.

Details on the award presentation can be found here.