CMMS and Augmented Reality: Preserving Know-How in Industrial Maintenance
The Canadian industrial sector is changing rapidly. For a long time, digitizing operations meant one thing: automation. Today, with Industry 5.0, technology is no longer just about replacing humans. It is about capturing their expertise, protecting it, and making it transferable, while keeping operations sustainable and resilient.
This is exactly the problem that the partnership between Maintenance Directe and DeepSight solves. By combining CMMS software with augmented reality, individual technician know-how is transformed into a sustainable corporate asset, accessible to the entire team, both today and ten years from now.
When you lose a maintenance veteran, you often lose years of unwritten know-how. Maintenance Directe and DeepSight work together to ensure this knowledge stays within the company, not inside a single person’s head.
The real risk isn’t downtime; it’s forgotten knowledge.
At Maintenance Directe, we support maintenance teams in structuring, planning, and tracking their operations through a comprehensive CMMS solution. But we see a recurring reality on the shop floor: scheduling a task doesn’t guarantee it will be executed with the expected precision, especially when the technician who truly knows the equipment retires, changes jobs, or is simply off that day.
This is the real challenge in industrial maintenance today. Every year, a portion of hands-on know-how leaves the company with the people who hold it, including the minor adjustments learned through experience, the instincts, and the workarounds that aren’t written down anywhere. A good CMMS documents assets. On its own, it does not document the human expertise that keeps them running.
A Better Structured CMMS, Better Transmitted Knowledge
By combining Maintenance Directe and DeepSight, we are doing more than just adding a tool. We are closing the loop between planning and corporate memory.
First, rigorous planning: with Maintenance Directe, every intervention is recorded, prioritized, and integrated into a global vision of asset health.
Next, augmented execution and captured knowledge: with DeepSight’s augmented reality, hands-on knowledge becomes explicit, documented, and reusable. Technicians have access to guided instructions and 3D diagrams overlaid directly onto the equipment. Above all, every intervention becomes an opportunity to capture expertise rather than simply apply it.
The ecosystem of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that comes with this approach also allows you to:
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Query your CMMS in natural language, just as you would ask an experienced colleague a question, such as “Show me all urgent corrective actions.”
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Detect anomalies like wear, leaks, corrosion, or missing parts simply from photos taken on the shop floor.
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Automatically extract maintenance plans from your PDF technical manuals, ensuring this documentary knowledge stops gathering dust in filing cabinets.
The results observed in the industry are concrete. Companies that have adopted this type of solution report up to a 60% reduction in employee training costs, alongside savings of up to 50% on equipment repair expenses.
DeepSight : Transforming Tacit Knowledge into a Corporate Asset
DeepSight’s augmented reality is not a gimmick. It is a tool for transferring and preserving skills.
Why Use a KMS?
A Knowledge Management System (KMS) is used to capture, organize, and make available all of a company’s knowledge. This includes both already written documents and procedures, as well as the expertise that exists only in the minds of experienced employees. It is this second type of knowledge, known as tacit knowledge—the instincts and best practices that are never put on paper—that is the most difficult to preserve and the most frequently lost.
Augmented reality is a game-changer for this type of tool. Rather than asking a senior technician to draft a procedure they never had the time or inclination to write, companies can directly capture their actions, instincts, and workarounds while they work. These are then transformed into visual guides overlaid right onto the equipment. Tacit knowledge becomes structured content, accessible to any technician, junior or senior, directly on the shop floor exactly when they need it.
The concept behind an AR-powered KMS is simple: no matter who created a piece of knowledge or who holds it today, it must remain accessible to the entire team. A junior technician should be able to find, within seconds and directly in their field of view, the solution a veteran developed after fifteen years on the job, even if that veteran is no longer there to answer the question.
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Hands-free guidance: Repair steps appear directly in the operator’s field of view, eliminating the need to juggle paper manuals. This keeps them focused and safe.
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Expert remote assistance: In complex situations, DeepSight connects the on-site operator with a remote expert. The expert sees exactly what the technician sees and can annotate the image in real time to guide their movements. The result is reduced machine downtime and rare expertise that can serve multiple sites and teams.
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Standardization and know-how capture: This is where the long-term value lies. The solution captures the best practices of the most experienced technicians and transforms them into permanent digital guides. This knowledge no longer depends on a single person; it becomes a corporate asset. Every intervention, whether performed by a novice or an expert, meets the same quality standards, even long after the expert who established them has moved on.
A Complementary Service, Not a Product Merger
This is a structured partnership within an ecosystem of complementary solutions, where each tool retains its autonomy and distinct specialization. The integration between the two is built entirely for the customer’s benefit, without tying them to a single roadmap or a single vendor.
This is precisely where the added value of the collaboration lies. Rather than forcing a client to choose between a management system (CMMS) and a knowledge transfer tool (KMS), or hoping that a single provider excels in both areas simultaneously, the partnership combines two specialized areas of expertise that complement each other naturally. Maintenance Directe knows how to organize work. DeepSight knows how to capture and transmit human know-how. This complementarity directly addresses the growing needs of several sectors, including manufacturing, agrifood, institutional, and the public sector.
This choice of autonomy is deliberate. It allows businesses to enjoy the best of both worlds without over-relying on a single partner, ensuring that the ecosystem continues to adapt as the company, its teams, and its needs evolve.
What This Means Concretely for Your Teams
By combining the structural power of the CMMS with the visual intelligence of DeepSight, we solve a problem that exists in almost every industrial environment: the gap between paper-based planning and the reality and memory of the shop floor.
This approach helps companies:
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Reduce variability: Execution becomes uniform and reliable, regardless of who performs the task.
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Build resilience: Knowledge becomes shared, documented, and accessible, reducing dependence on irreplaceable individual expertise.
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Optimize performance: Assets are better maintained through processes that are followed, respected, and passed down from one generation of workers to the next.
Toward a Resilient, Sovereign Industry That Forgets Nothing
Faced with global market uncertainties and a skilled labor shortage affecting the entire sector, Canada needs robust industrial infrastructure. However, it also needs companies capable of preserving their know-how beyond staff turnover. The partnership between Maintenance Directe and DeepSight gives industrial managers the tools required to absorb shocks, secure operations, and pass down the expertise that makes them strong, rather than watching it walk out the door with every retirement.
By choosing this approach, companies are doing more than just adopting new tools. They are building a lasting institutional memory to support a more agile, human-centric, and resilient industry.
Beyond the Software: Turnkey Services and Custom Development
We do more than just provide you with a login. Maintenance Directe offers comprehensive, turnkey support tailored to the unique infrastructure of your resort.
1. Custom Software Solutions
We specialize in designing and integrating tailored software solutions built to centralize your operations. Our platforms ensure that the right metrics are displayed to the right stakeholders at exactly the right time. We are experts in integrating powerful ERP solutions like SAP Business One, as well as industrial data acquisition and control platforms like IGNITION, allowing your snowmaking system, ski lifts, and management software to communicate seamlessly with one another.
2. Direct and Dedicated Training
A complementary service available with your CMMS solution. Training your teams brings together sustainability, human capital, and performance, resulting in knowledge that is passed down, valued technicians, and optimized operations.
Proper human resource management is essential to the long-term viability of your preventive maintenance program and, more broadly, your entire maintenance operations. Well-trained teams adopt the solution faster, more effectively, and for the long term.
Short on time and resources? We offer full support for your team, covering inventory, data management, installation, configuration, and training.