Ford’s New Cutting-Edge Remote Viewing Tech, The SWIS, Allowing For More Efficient Diagnoses

To help get customers back on the road quicker, Ford dealerships across the United States now have access to state-of-the-art remote viewing technology.

Notably, it allows them to receive real-time assistance for customer repairs from team members at the Ford Technical Assistance Center (TAC) in Dearborn, Michigan.

Ford’s equipment program specialist for general service, David Green, commented, “The remote technology is designed to assist the technicians as they’re working on vehicles with the goal of increasing efficiency and decreasing down time for customers. This technology modernizes and simplifies our operations, benefiting everyone involved.”

Breaking it down, the technology is known as See What I See (SWIS), which comes in the form of a two-way, hands-free electronic headset that enables both visual and audio communication.

It uses remote assistance software that allows the technical assistance team to see what the dealership tech is seeing while they work on the vehicle in real time. 

Specifically, SWIS’ augmented reality capability lets the TAC team members display modified or enhanced images on the headset for the dealer technicians to view.

“We had one case where a technician reported the vehicle would not recognize the low tire pressure sensors. When the tech contacted the Hotline using SWIS, they quickly found out they were using the wrong tool when the technician held it up in front of the camera. Once the right tool was used, everything was programmed just the way it should,” added Green.

At the TAC headquarters, a team of about 150 technicians receives about 5,000 calls from dealership technicians across the U.S. each week looking for support or answers regarding a variety of issues. 

Of those, about 200 cannot be diagnosed by phone. As such, field agents must be sent out to check out the issue in person.

So far, Ford has activated 1,200 of the headsets with more than 350 SWIS calls to TAC in the last 90 days. All US-based dealers are expected to have SWIS in their toolbox by November of this year.

Mullinax Ford’s service manager in Apopka Florida, Susan Padro, remarked, “SWIS definitely helps get our customers back on the road more quickly. We’ve had some wiring situations that we were able to fix in a few hours versus a few days using See What I See and that’s really valuable.”

Currently, SWIS is for diagnostic assistance, but designers are working to enhance the headsets to add more specific use cases such as H-VAC concerns. 

Other uses include gaining prior approval before replacing a windshield by sending pictures of the defect instantly. 

Second would be to use the headset to assist a technician on site with certain electric vehicle repairs instead of sending an engineer, allowing for faster repairs and savings on travel costs. 

Then, mobile service teams are also looking at using SWIS to remote in from someone’s driveway where they are performing a service like tire changes. 

Last but not least, training remotely using the headset between an instructor and a student, which eliminates the travelling and attending of distant training centres.

That said, SWIS is a global program and is currently being used in Canada, South Africa, UK, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, and Australia.