Capturing, Preserving and Reusing Commissioning Knowledge
When Fagor joined the PERKS project, the objective was not simply to test new digital tools. The goal was to address a long-standing challenge faced by many industrial organizations: how to capture, preserve, and transfer the procedural knowledge required to commission increasingly complex CNC machines.
Machine commissioning is a highly specialized activity. As a supplier of Computerized Numerical Control – CNC systems, Fagor supports machine manufacturers in configuring and commissioning their machines, ensuring that the CNC system is properly adapted to the characteristics and requirements of each machine and that its full performance potential can be achieved. This process requires technicians to configure machine parameters, validate hardware and software settings, consult technical documentation, and resolve unexpected issues, often under demanding project deadlines. Much of the knowledge required for these activities is acquired through years of practical experience. Although a significant part of this knowledge is documented in manuals, machine backup files, and project documentation, the information is typically distributed across multiple sources and is not organized in a way that directly guides technicians through machine-specific commissioning activities.
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The question we wanted to answer was simple:
How can we make this knowledge more accessible and reusable, particularly for less experienced technicians?
This challenge became the foundation of the Fagor use case within PERKS.
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Building the platform together
Throughout the project, Fagor worked closely with the technical partners by providing industrial requirements, real commissioning procedures, representative machine configurations, machine backup files, and technical documentation.
A key factor in the Fagor use case was the active involvement of professionals representing the different roles that participate in machine commissioning activities. Throughout the project, Fagor brought together experienced commissioning technicians, novice technicians, technical documentation specialists, and product training experts. This combination made it possible to capture not only expert know-how accumulated over years of experience, but also the practical needs of less experienced technicians and the perspective of those responsible for creating and maintaining technical knowledge.
The consortium complemented this industrial expertise with technical partners specialized in different AI and data-related domains, including procedural knowledge management, knowledge graphs, conversational AI, chatbot technologies, information extraction, auditing functionalities, and human-in-the-loop validation approaches.
This combination of industrial use cases, domain experts, and AI technology developers created a highly collaborative environment in which the platform could be progressively refined and validated against real operational requirements, ensuring that the developed solutions remained closely aligned with the needs of future users.
A platform designed around real commissioning activities
The PERKS platform was designed around the daily activities carried out by commissioning technicians. Instead of requiring users to navigate multiple disconnected sources of information, the platform brings together machine configurations, commissioning procedures, technical documentation, feedback mechanisms, auditing functionalities, and conversational support within a single environment, supporting the entire commissioning lifecycle.
Access to the platform is protected through individual user credentials and role-based access control. Depending on the assigned role, users can access different sections, functionalities, and information within the platform, ensuring compliance with confidentiality and data privacy requirements. The integrated Users / Roles administration section enables authorized personnel to create and manage user accounts and assign roles directly within the platform.
Through this unified environment, users can:
- Create and maintain commissioning procedures, enabling the capture of expert knowledge and its transformation into standardized procedures that can be consistently followed by different technicians.
- Capture, preserve, and reuse commissioning knowledge by building a repository of previously commissioned machines, technical documentation, and project information. This knowledge is structured and interconnected within the PERKS Knowledge Graph, transforming dispersed information into a living knowledge asset that can be easily discovered, contextualized, and reused across future commissioning projects.
- Manage machine configuration information through structured and standardized forms, ensuring a common approach to naming projects, selecting hardware references, and documenting machine characteristics, while creating a reliable and reusable machine knowledge base.
- Support technicians during commissioning execution through customized step-by-step guidance, contextual chatbot assistance, and automatically generated knowledge assets derived from technical documentation.
- Monitor, improve, and govern commissioning activities through auditing, traceability, feedback management, issue tracking, and role-based access control functionalities.
Rather than acting as isolated tools, these functionalities operate as part of an integrated platform designed to support technicians before, during, and after commissioning activities.
By integrating all these functionalities within a single platform, PERKS provides a centralized environment for capturing, managing, sharing, and exploiting commissioning knowledge throughout the machine commissioning lifecycle. The different platform components are designed to interoperate seamlessly, allowing machine information, procedures, technical documentation, execution traces, and user feedback to be connected and reused across the platform, amplifying the benefits of the individual solutions and creating a richer knowledge ecosystem.
Validated by its users
The final validation activities confirmed a highly positive perception of the platform. Participants assigned an overall platform rating of 9 out of 10 and highlighted its value for supporting commissioning activities, preserving organizational knowledge, facilitating knowledge transfer, and standardizing procedures. This positive perception was reflected in the strong level of user acceptance, with all pilot testers indicating that they would adopt the platform and recommend it to colleagues.
Beyond the original scope of the Fagor use case, the validation activities also triggered discussions about other industrial procedures that could benefit from a similar approach. Participants identified potential applications in maintenance and troubleshooting activities, where technicians could benefit from guided procedures and access to historical knowledge; after-sales and service support, enabling faster access to machine-specific information and solutions to recurring issues; quality control, where standardized procedures and traceability are essential; employee training and onboarding, supporting the transfer of expert knowledge to new personnel; and project or management activities, where information from different sources, lessons learned, and best practices need to be captured, structured, and reused across the organization. These discussions reinforced the idea that the challenges addressed by PERKS are not exclusive to machine commissioning, but are shared by many industrial environments where expertise, procedures, and operational knowledge need to be captured, maintained, and transferred over time.
Looking ahead
The PERKS journey has shown that expert knowledge does not have to remain locked inside documents, machine backups, or years of individual experience. By bringing together industrial users and AI technology developers, the project has demonstrated a practical approach to preserving and reusing procedural knowledge in complex industrial environments.
For Fagor, this is not only about technology. It is about ensuring that valuable expertise can be captured, shared, reused, and passed on to the next generation of technicians, helping preserve knowledge that is critical for the future of industry.
