World of Motion 18 – 19 Highlights 2025 > www.herrenknecht.com > www.festo.com/ax With lengths of up to 150 meters and diameters of up to 17 meters, Herrenknecht tunnel boring machines are true giants. They are used in many infrastructure projects all over the world to excavate tunnels quickly and efficiently. At Europe’s largest infrastructure construction site in London, a rail link, High Speed Two (HS2), is being constructed between the north of England and London for trains traveling at up to 360 km/h. Two Herrenknecht tunneling machines are being used, whose reliability is based, among other things, on the digital maintenance manager AX Smartenance from Festo. The Festo software is integrated into the Herrenknecht.Connected digital system. Focus on maintenance To ensure complex systems such as a tunneling machine can function without interruption, having a deep insight into the internal condition of the machines and seamless maintenance are crucial. In the past, necessary maintenance work often resulted in excessively long and expensive downtimes, while documentation on paper was slow, laborious, and complex. With the digital customer portal Herrenknecht.Connected, Herrenknecht customers receive insights into and data from almost all systems on the construction site, from a tunneling machine in operation to wastewater treatment. The family-owned company also wanted to integrate a modern and user-friendly maintenance management system into this platform. Everything at a glance While researching the market, the IT specialists at Herrenknecht came across AX Smartenance from Festo. The maintenance software, also known as CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System), allows production managers and plant operators to carry out digital maintenance and servicing. Maintenance tasks and plans can be flexibly created, duplicated, and then evaluated, while intelligent user management improves fast teamwork and boosts the efficiency of maintenance management. Transparent monitoring, intuitive operation: Festo AX Smartenance, the digital maintenance management solution, in use on the HS2 tunnel construction project in London. Integrated into Herrenknecht’s customer portal, the CMMS AX Smartenance is responsible for the maintenance management of tunnel boring machines and all other maintenance-relevant machines and systems on a large construction site. It provides automated analysis functions, clear dashboards, and detailed evaluations of sensor data. This, in turn, reduces downtimes, minimizes the time required for maintenance and thus significantly reduces costs, all while increasing efficiency. Maintenance staff and mechanics working on the machine also benefit from AX Smartenance. This is because the teams on site can now process, report and track routine tasks and incidents directly via the CMMS software. All maintenance-relevant documents such as circuit diagrams and drawings are available in one central location. As a result, the work of the maintenance teams becomes much easier and productivity increases.
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