From Paper-Based to QR Code Inspections: Giving Equipment an "ID Card"
Original: https://cli.im/article/detail/2064
In industries such as manufacturing, energy and power, and construction, equipment inspection is an essential part of the workflow. Traditional maintenance checks and inspection records are mostly manually written on paper, resulting in isolated information about each piece of equipment, creating information "silos." Each "silo" requires significant time and manpower to consolidate and inventory. Additionally, manually recorded information may be unclear, contain errors or omissions, posing potential risks.
From Paper-Based to QR Code Inspections: Giving Equipment an "ID Card"
To address this, the CaoLiao QR Code team at Ningbo Linjia Network Technology Co., Ltd. developed the CaoLiao QR Code Management System to digitize form records. CaoLiao QR Code can quickly generate QR codes containing various types of content and is also a flexible application-building platform. It allows free combination of functions to build business applications at low cost, improving management efficiency. Currently, it has been used by over 430 million people. In this system, QR codes act like "ID cards for equipment." Through forms, basic information such as equipment parameters and responsible persons can be recorded online, and additional information like operation manuals and technical documents related to the equipment can be uploaded.
During inspections, personnel scan the QR code on the equipment, fill in the inspection results, and upload photos, videos, and other multimedia materials to clearly and accurately record the current inspection status. If equipment abnormalities are detected, the system automatically notifies the relevant responsible persons. After repairs, inspectors can add maintenance notes under the abnormal record, including text descriptions, uploaded images, or filling out forms as required by the administrator. They can also @mention relevant responsible persons to review the updates. In other words, by simply scanning the "ID card," the equipment's status can be monitored throughout its lifecycle, and abnormalities can be analyzed and traced.
Efficiency is a key factor in daily inspection work. In practice, inspectors often work in remote areas such as railways, factory sites, or unfinished construction projects where network conditions are poor. Consequently, scanning QR codes can lead to slow page loading, especially when uploading or downloading multimedia files like images, audio, and videos for faulty equipment. This unreliable loading speed hampers inspection efficiency.
"Our construction sites are in suburban areas, and inspectors need to travel between multiple inspection points to check if each item complies with regulations. However, after completing the inspection, they often find they cannot successfully upload videos to the QR code for record-keeping. Inspectors have to wait on-site, unable to leave, which significantly impacts our inspection efficiency," reported the Safety Office Director of a China State Construction Engineering Corporation subsidiary after using CaoLiao QR Code for some time.
CaoLiao QR Code analyzed user feedback and identified that the main issues were: inspection scenarios often being in remote locations with poor network conditions, leading to blank pages after scanning, slow loading times, and slow file upload and download speeds. The consequences included not only reduced inspection efficiency but also the risk of critical inspection results not being effectively recorded.
Huawei Cloud CDN Service Accelerates QR Code Performance
Linjia Network brought these business challenges to Huawei Cloud Ningbo Innovation Lab.
Huawei Cloud Ningbo Innovation Lab is the first of its kind globally launched by Huawei. It opens up Huawei's core underlying technologies in cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things, including basic services like Elastic Cloud Server (ECS), Elastic Volume Service (EVS), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Cloud Database MySQL, Cloud Container Engine (CCE), and products like the software development platform DevCloud. It serves Ningbo enterprises, forming an industrial ecosystem that includes "solution design, software development, and integration services." Since its operation began in 2018, Huawei Cloud Ningbo Innovation Lab has served over 5,000 local enterprises.
Addressing CaoLiao QR Code's challenges, Huawei Cloud Ningbo Innovation Lab quickly assembled a team to create a CDN-based inspection scenario solution for CaoLiao QR Code, helping to achieve safe, stable, and efficient QR code inspections, effectively improving the quality and efficiency of enterprise inspections. The specific advantages of this solution in the CaoLiao QR Code inspection scenario are:
Higher distribution efficiency at CDN edge nodes, easily handling high concurrency periods. User QR codes contain a large number of media files, requiring high bandwidth speed from storage services during scan-and-access. The solution enables inspectors to use CDN for downloads, distributing high-demand content to CDN nodes nationwide, allowing them to access needed content locally. This results in a more stable network, effectively reducing the load pressure on CaoLiao QR Code's origin server during peak concurrency periods. It saves origin server costs and can further reduce broadband service costs during off-peak hours.
Multi-level caching further accelerates access, improving inspection efficiency. Huawei Cloud CDN's content delivery network, leveraging proprietary AICache technology and multi-level cache scheduling, tracks global popularity in real-time. With ultra-fast, high-capacity SSD storage, it effectively improves cache hit rates and reduces inspectors' access wait times. This enhances inspection efficiency and lowers the required manpower and equipment wear-and-tear costs.
Multiple anti-leeching features enable effective access control. Huawei Cloud CDN's multiple anti-leeching features identify and filter visitor identities by configuring filtering policies based on Referrer whitelists and blacklists, achieving the goal of restricting access sources. Additionally, URL authentication can be configured to protect user site resources, preventing malicious downloading and misuse, effectively addressing leeching hazards during inspections.
Huawei Cloud CDN is industry-leading, with over 150Tbps of bandwidth capacity, 99.9% availability, and 99% scheduling accuracy. It currently boasts over 2,800 global nodes, covering six continents.
Mr. Jiang Yunhui, founder and general manager of Linjia Network's CaoLiao QR Code, expressed great satisfaction with the Huawei Cloud CDN platform: "Through the stable and high-quality download acceleration service provided by Huawei Cloud CDN, the average national request latency has been reduced by 30ms. Inspectors can open the corresponding QR codes more quickly, effectively reducing download and update wait times during inspections, and enhancing our users' experience and business conversion rates."
Beyond its application in CaoLiao QR Code's digitalized inspection scenarios, enabling efficient, even real-time, synchronization of inspection equipment information, Huawei Cloud also appears in various other inspection services. For example, the Huawei Cloud End-Cloud Collaborative Video Conference Solution integrates the Huawei Cloud Meeting SDK into the wearable device application layer and accesses Huawei Cloud Meeting Service APIs on the platform server. This enables real-time GIS positioning of inspectors, map-based calling, inspection task dispatch, remote guidance, and real-time monitoring. Another example is the smart grid inspection project, based on the unified "Cloud-Pipe-Edge-Device" IoT architecture. It matches different scenarios like power transmission line towers, high-voltage tunnel corridors, substations, and distribution rooms, using cloud, edge computing, AI, and other ICT technologies to reconstruct the solution architecture for smart inspections.
Huawei Cloud is committed to providing stable, reliable, secure, trustworthy, and sustainably innovative cloud services for various scenarios, including manufacturing, energy and power, and construction. Looking ahead, Huawei Cloud will persist in technological innovation and practice technology inclusiveness. It aims to co-create, share, and achieve mutual success with partners and customers, facilitating industry digital transformation and intelligent upgrading, empowering applications, enabling data, and serving as the "fertile soil" for an intelligent world.
Article reprinted from China Daily: Huawei Cloud CDN Accelerates CaoLiao QR Code Inspection System Solution