Augos Assist
Augos Assist is the operator and technician accountability layer of Augos Factory. When an operator calls for help from the Augos Operator Terminal, Assist timestamps each handover that follows, so the technician's side of a stop, the response, the repair and the waiting, is recorded with system timestamps. It is an optional extra to the standard Augos Factory fee. In short, it is the stoppage attribution for the technical team's response and resolution time: it splits the allocation of an unplanned stop between production (the operator) and the technical team (the technician).
What Assist is
Assist is software. It runs on the Augos Operator Terminal, in the Augos cloud and in the technician's browser. Its job is narrow: to record, with system-generated timestamps, the moments at which an unplanned stop changes hands. The operator decides the fault needs a technician and raises the call. A technician accepts it. The technician arrives at the machine and starts work. Work pauses for a part or a permit and resumes. The machine runs again. Each of those moments is a boundary between two of the Stoppage Response Stages, and each stage has an owner. Without Assist the platform knows a stop lasted forty minutes and what the operator called it. With Assist it knows who held the clock for each of those minutes.
Source: Augos Factory method, Glossary: Augos Assist
What a stop looks like without it
Without Assist the terminal still records every unplanned stop with its duration and reason, and the platform still analyses it by event, operator and product. That is enough for standard OEE and for benchmarking operators. Attribution then has no technician owner, the full resolution of a stop sits with the operator, and operator resolution percentage and the technician KPIs are not shown, because nothing records when the call went out or when help arrived. A long breakdown reads as one block of Availability loss and, in a plant without Assist, the argument about whose block it was runs on memory. Assist gives both sides a record that neither can edit.
How a call for help runs
| Step | What happens | Stage boundary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Call | The operator has looked at the fault and decided it needs a technician. They press Request Assistance on the terminal. The button appears only on downtime reasons set up for Assist. | Ends Operator Evaluation; starts Technician Response |
| 2 · Accept | The call reaches the technicians on duty. One accepts it and gives an estimated waiting time in minutes, which the terminal shows together with who accepted. A technician who cannot take it defers it, which leaves it open for another technician to accept. | Technician Response continues |
| 3 · Arrive | At the machine, the technician scans the QR code on the terminal and starts the repair. | Ends Technician Response; starts Active Wrench |
| 4 · Wait | If the repair stalls, waiting for a part or a second pair of hands, the technician goes inactive and the stall is recorded as Inactive Wrench until work resumes. | Active Wrench pauses; Inactive Wrench runs |
| 5 · Complete | The repair is done. The technician ends the repair and confirms or changes the downtime reason. | Ends Active Wrench; closes the stop |
The operator can cancel the call until a technician accepts it, and the whole stop is then recorded as Operator Resolution. If production has not resumed when the repair ends, the terminal moves to a subsequent stop straight away. If production resumes before the technician closes the job, the technician must still close it, and that time counts towards the total resolution time. Every timestamp in the sequence is written by the system at the moment the button is pressed, and no role can change it afterwards.
Source: Augos Factory method, Augos Assist flow; Augos Assist training deck, October 2026 (the live workflow); Stoppage Response Stages
What it measures
Three of the five stages exist only because Assist records their boundaries. Technician Response is the time from the call to the technician's arrival; it belongs to the technician function and is read alongside how many technicians were free, so a slow response with idle technicians is a staffing question and a slow response with none free is a capacity question. Active Wrench is hands-on repair, comparable across technicians for the same fault. Inactive Wrench is time at the machine with no work possible; it is shared between the technician function and the supply chain that holds the part. Each stage, for each fault code, is benchmarked against the plant's own Typical and Recommended Time, and the difference is Recoverable Time. The stages appear in the Unplanned Stoppage analysis and roll up into the Owner column on the Performance Overview.
Source: Augos Factory method, Glossary: Typical Time, Recommended Time, Recoverable Time
Keeping it fair
Assist measures technicians the way the platform measures operators. Stage durations are reported as medians, so one catastrophic stop does not define anyone's typical response. A stage with fewer than ten events in the period is flagged as statistically fragile and not graded. And because the timestamps are immutable, the record settles the dispute that used to run between production and maintenance: when the call went out, when the technician arrived, and how much of the stop was waiting for something neither of them controlled.
Source: Augos Factory method, median and small-sample rules; Stoppage Response Stages: fairness
What it costs
Augos Assist is an optional extra to the standard Augos Factory fee: R250 per technician per month, or R1,250 per month for the whole site, excluding VAT. It needs the operator to raise the call from the Augos Operator Terminal and the technician to respond through the platform, which is what instruments the handovers. Without it the technician stages are empty because nothing records them, and a plant can add Assist when it is ready to measure the technician side. See What Augos Factory includes.
Source: Augos Factory single offer, 6 October 2026; Tim Stevens, 7 October 2026
Common questions
What is Augos Assist?
The operator and technician accountability layer of Augos Factory. It timestamps each handover in an unplanned stop so that Technician Response, Active Wrench and Inactive Wrench are measured, each with an owner. It is an optional extra to the standard fee.
Does the technician need special hardware?
No. The operator raises the call from the Augos Operator Terminal and the technician responds through the Augos platform in a browser, on a phone, tablet or workstation. See On any device.
What if the operator fixes it before the technician arrives?
The operator can cancel the call until a technician accepts it, and the stop is then recorded as Operator Resolution. Nothing is attributed to the technician.
Can a technician change the times afterwards?
No. Every stage timestamp is system-generated and immutable across all roles, which is what makes the record usable in a dispute between operations and maintenance.
Can we start without Assist?
Yes. Augos Assist is an optional extra. Without it the terminal and the platform still record and analyse every unplanned stop by event, operator and product. Add Assist when you are ready to measure the technician response.