What we built: Conversational AI for professional coffee equipment support

A leading manufacturer of professional coffee and beverage equipment, with 65 years of leadership, known worldwide for reliability and after-sales support, was facing a communication issue that affected its operation.

Accessing technical knowledge in real-time remained a challenge for operators and technicians.

The Smart Brew Assistant transforms static PDF manuals into an intelligent conversational support experience.

The challenge: Reducing friction in technical support and field maintenance

Technicians rely on extensive PDF manuals for:

• Troubleshooting.

• Configuration.

• Preventive and corrective maintenance.

While comprehensive, these documents:

• They are time-consuming to navigate.

• Slow down field operations.

• Increase dependency on support teams.

The goal: Reduce search time and deliver contextual, immediate assistance from any device.

The Solution: A RAG-powered chatbot built on technical documentation

The Smart Brew Assistant uses a Retrieval-Augmented Generation architecture to turn manuals into a semantic knowledge engine.

Key components:

• PDF ingestion and fragmentation.

• Embedding generation (Ollama or OpenAI).

• Vector storage in ChromaDB.

• Backend in FastAPI and frontend in Vue 3.

• Multilingual contextual responses.

• Automated “Service Request” creation when needed.

• No exposure of sensitive data to external AI services.

The assistant guides troubleshooting steps, answers equipment-specific questions, and streamlines technical workflows.

Impact and evolution: Less downtime, faster support, smarter service

The solution enables:

• Immediate access to technical knowledge.

• Reduced troubleshooting time.

• Lower operational burden on support teams.

• Improved user satisfaction in the field.

It also establishes the foundation for future enhancements, such as:

• Voice interaction.

• Assisted self-diagnostics.

• Predictive maintenance integration.