# Remote Technologies as Common Practice in Industrial Maintenance: What Do Experts Say?
## 6 Conclusions  
In this paper, an exploratory interview study on the current use of remote technologies in industrial maintenance practice was conducted. The aim was to use a qualitative approach to establish categories that could be used to evaluate a successful remote maintenance strategy. Through the qualitative interviews, current challenges and potentials of remote maintenance concepts in applied practice could be collected. Based on the literature research and the data from the interviews, all research questions could be answered soundly. It should be noted that there are currently no scenarios for the use of remote technologies in industrial maintenance within the companies surveyed. However, there is potential for the use of remote technologies for activities with a low degree of complexity as well as fault diagnosis, where a maintenance technician receives remote support from another expert on site and training new or inexperienced employees. Based on the findings from the literature research and the interview data collected, the characteristics of remote strategies were also established, e.g., the reduction of scepticism among users, the expansion of the IT infrastructure in companies and the training of employees regarding new technologies as well as the required expertise to carry out maintenance tasks. These were systematically classified with the help of the holistic approach of the interaction of human, technology and organisation. With the answer to the third research question, a reference framework for the success assessment of remote maintenance strategies could be established. The frame of reference consists of categories that relate to human performance requirements as well as technical and organisational framework conditions. This allows for a holistic assessment using the developed reference framework. Moreover, it helps users to systematically build up a remote maintenance strategy and to evaluate it with regard to its probability of success. In summary, this paper is a first step towards exchanging knowledge and experience on digital maintenance between industry and research. The approach we propose and the resulting evaluation framework can be used by researchers, equipment manufacturers and manufacturing companies that perform industrial maintenance in their daily practice. Both can be used to evaluate and standardise remote industrial maintenance strategies. Thus, this paper can serve as a cornerstone for (a) a first information overview for future research topics/studies dealing with industrial remote maintenance, (b) the development and adaptation of methods and tools, and (c) the cooperation of companies that intend to plan or implement a remote maintenance strategy themselves. Further studies are necessary to deepen the state of the art in the field of remote maintenance in intelligent manufacturing systems. Additionally, the focus of research and development should be on the development of standards for remote technologies and methods in order to address the existing practical challenges in the implementation of a remote maintenance strategy. As we discussed in our findings, security plays a particularly important role in the use of remote technologies. The standard to be developed must take data security into account. The integration of security can be considered as one of the main research directions in future studies. Conceptualization, K.W. and L.S. ; methodology, L.S. ; validation, K.W., L.S. ; investigation, L.S. ; data curation, J.S. ; writing--original draft preparation, L.S. and J.S. ; writing--review and editing, J.G. and L.S. ; project administration, K.W. and L.S. ; funding acquisition, K.W. and J.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This measure is co-financed with tax funds on the basis of the budget passed by the Saxon State Parliament. The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data is not publicly available for data privacy reasons.