Monitoring availability of facility equipment

• US 9,915,929 B1
• Filed: 09/30/2014
• Issued: 03/13/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Dubinsky, David Magee, Steigerwald, Kris Scott, Stolarski, Steven Richard, Knight, Kraig, Gregory, Shelton George
• Primary Examiner(s): Dao, Thuy
• Application Number:
  US14/502,683
• Time in Patent Office: 1,260 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 15/02 electric
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks

Abstract

Disclosed herein is a platform for monitoring the availability of facility equipment. The platform may include a facility equipment monitoring tool with access to configuration data for one or more facilities. The platform allows for deployment of a mobile client application across a plurality of mobile devices to facilitate performance of walk-through inspections (i.e., rounds) of equipment within respective facilities, and to provide real-time equipment availability indicators and other status indicators via a user interface of the application. The data collected during walk-through inspections may be logged and uploaded to a central server system and stored in a data repository. The platform may further provide a network-accessible monitoring dashboard for viewing real-time, and historical, data regarding the walk-through inspections performed at various facilities, and an administrative user interface to update configuration data in the data repository of the central server system.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

running, on a mobile computing device, an application to support a walk-through inspection of equipment within a facility;

downloading, to the mobile computing device, questions for each piece of equipment for assessing a current state of each piece of equipment;

reading, with a code reader of the mobile computing device, machine-readable codes that are collocated with respective pieces of equipment along the walk-through inspection;

retrieving the questions based at least in part on the machine-readable codes being read with the code reader;

presenting, on a display of the mobile computing device, the questions along with fields or choices for answering the questions;

receiving, via an input device of the mobile computing device, user input indicating answers to the questions; and

presenting, on the display of the mobile computing device, an auditing notification for a user logged into the application based at least in part on deriving, from times at which the machine-readable codes were read, an order in which the user visited multiple stops along the walk-through inspection, as compared to a predetermined order of the multiple stops.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the answers include a first answer to a first question of the questions and a second answer to a second question of the questions, the method further comprising:

downloading information for conditions of the equipment that are indicative of a state of each piece of equipment;

comparing the first answer to the conditions to determine that the first answer triggers an alarm condition;

presenting, on the display of the mobile computing device, a first visual indicator indicating that the first answer has triggered the alarm condition;

comparing the second answer to the conditions to determine that the second answer does not trigger the alarm condition; and

presenting, on the display of the mobile computing device, a second visual indicator indicating that the second answer has not triggered the alarm condition.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising uploading, to a remote computing device:

the machine-readable codes read with the code reader;

the times at which the machine-readable codes were read; and

the answers.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting, on the display of the mobile computing device, respective equipment-level visual indicators to indicate current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment based on the answers.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising displaying a map indicating the multiple stops along the walk-through inspection and the respective pieces of equipment associated with the multiple stops.

6. A mobile computing device comprising:

one or more processors;

memory storing an application that is executable by the one or more processors to support walk-through inspections of equipment within a facility; and

a code reader to capture machine-readable codes that are collocated with respective pieces of equipment along a walk-through inspection;

wherein the application, when executed by the one or more processors, is configured to;

present, on the mobile computing device, questions for assessing current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment in response to the machine-readable codes being captured by the code reader;

receive answers to the questions that are provided via user input to the mobile computing device; and

present an auditing notification for a user logged into the application based at least in part on deriving, from times at which the machine-readable codes were captured, an order in which the user visited multiple stops along the walk-through inspection, as compared to a predetermined order of the multiple stops.

7. The mobile computing device of claim 6, further comprising a communication interface to download, from a remote computing device, information for the walk-through inspection and to upload, to the remote computing device:

the machine-readable codes captured by the code reader during the walk-through inspection;

the times at which the machine-readable codes were captured; and

the answers pertaining to the respective pieces of equipment along the walk-through inspection.

8. The mobile computing device of claim 6, wherein the application is further configured to present respective equipment-level visual indicators to indicate the current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment based on the answers to the questions.

9. The mobile computing device of claim 6, wherein the application is further configured to present a map indicating the multiple stops along the walk-through inspection and the respective pieces of equipment.

10. The mobile computing device of claim 6, wherein the application is further configured to:

determine, based on the answers to the questions, that a current state of an individual piece of equipment is a defective state; and

cause transmission of a request to dispatch personnel to the individual piece of equipment.

11. The mobile computing device of claim 6, wherein the questions comprise a dynamic list of questions that utilizes a decision tree to choose one or more follow up questions based on receipt of particular answers to individual ones of the questions.

12. A computer-implemented method comprising:

executing, on a mobile computing device, an application to support a walk-through inspection of equipment within a facility;

reading, with a code reader of the mobile computing device, machine-readable codes that are collocated with respective pieces of equipment along the walk-through inspection;

presenting, on the mobile computing device, questions for assessing current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment;

receiving, via user input to the mobile computing device, answers to the questions; and

presenting, on the mobile computing device, an auditing notification for a user logged into the application based at least in part on an order in which the user visited multiple stops along the walk-through inspection, as compared to a predetermined order of the multiple stops, the order in which the user visited the multiple stops having been derived from times at which the machine-readable codes were read with the code reader.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising:

presenting, on the mobile computing device, respective equipment-level visual indicators to indicate the current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment based on the answers.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising presenting, on the mobile computing device, a map indicating the multiple stops and the respective pieces of equipment along the walk-through inspection.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising:

determine, based at least in part on at least one answer of the answers, that a current state of an individual piece of equipment is a defective state; and

causing transmission of a request to dispatch personnel to the individual piece of equipment.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the questions comprise a dynamic list of questions that utilizes a decision tree to choose one or more follow up questions based on receipt of particular answers to questions.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising:

receiving, from a remote computing device, information for the walk-through inspection prior to the reading of the machine-readable codes, wherein the information includes a condition that is indicative of a state of the equipment; and

assessing the current respective states of the respective pieces of equipment by comparing at least one answer of the answers to the condition.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising uploading, to a remote computing device:

the machine-readable codes read by the code reader during the walk-through inspection;

the times at which the machine-readable codes were read; and

the answers.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the comparing of the at least one answer to the condition further comprises at least one of comparing a numerical answer to a threshold value or comparing a Boolean answer to a failing value for the Boolean answer.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the comparing of the first answer or the second answer to the conditions further comprises at least one of comparing a numerical answer to a threshold value or comparing a Boolean answer to a failing value for the Boolean answer.