PETRA: Process Evolution using a TRAce-based system on a maintenance platform

To meet increasing needs in the field of maintenance, we studied the dynamic aspect of process and services on a maintenance platform, a major challenge in process mining and knowledge engineering. Hence, we propose a dynamic experience feedback approach to exploit maintenance process behaviors in real execution of the maintenance platform. An active learning process exploiting event log is introduced by taking into account the dynamic aspect of knowledge using trace engineering. Our proposal makes explicit the underlying knowledge of platform users by means of a trace-based system called “PETRA”. The goal of this system is to extract new knowledge rules about transitions and activities in maintenance processes from previous platform executions as well as its user (i.e. maintenance operators) interactions. While following a Knowledge Traces Discovery process and handling the maintenance ontology IMAMO, “PETRA” is composed of three main subsystems: tracking, learning and knowledge capitalization. The capitalized rules are shared in the platform knowledge base in order to be reused in future process executions. The feasibility of this method is proven through concrete use cases involving four maintenance processes and their simulation

Test and evaluation of a fuzzy diagnostic model for PEFC

Diagnosing faulty conditions of engineering systems is a highly desirable process within control structures, such that condition based maintenance (CBM) is made possible and effective. The goal herein is to enhance lifetime performance and extend system availability. Difficulty arises in developing a mathematical model which can describe all working and failure modes of complex systems. However the human ability to diagnose a system through experience is a powerful one, and can be represented in fuzzy logic. This paper presents the knowledge base of degradation modes in a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), captured from experts and experimental findings. The defined rules produced for the fuzzy logic model connect ob-served operational modes and symptoms to component degradation. The system is then tested against common automotive stress conditions to assess operability

Software development: A paradigm for the future

A new paradigm for software development that treats software development as an experimental activity is presented. It provides built-in mechanisms for learning how to develop software better and reusing previous experience in the forms of knowledge, processes, and products. It uses models and measures to aid in the tasks of characterization, evaluation and motivation. An organization scheme is proposed for separating the project-specific focus from the organization's learning and reuse focuses of software development. The implications of this approach for corporations, research and education are discussed and some research activities currently underway at the University of Maryland that support this approach are presented

Integration of experience feedback into the product lifecycle: an approach to best respond to the bidding process

Bidding process allows a client to choose a bidder to realize an embodiment of work, supply or service. From the bidder point of view, there are several obvious risks when responding because he bets on a future development that hasn’t been yet realized. We propose to assist the bidder with decision support tools based on past experiences to detect, report and minimize these potential risks. In this paper, we present the definition of a conceptual architecture to integrate experience feedback into the product lifecycle taking into account all stages of product lifecycle to best respond new bidding processes

Analysis reuse exploiting taxonomical information and belief assignment in industrial problem solving

To take into account the experience feedback on solving complex problems in business is deemed as a way to improve the quality of products and processes. Only a few academic works, however, are concerned with the representation and the instrumentation of experience feedback systems. We propose, in this paper, a model of experiences and mechanisms to use these experiences. More specifically, we wish to encourage the reuse of already performed expert analysis to propose a priori analysis in the solving of a new problem. The proposal is based on a representation in the context of the experience of using a conceptual marker and an explicit representation of the analysis incorporating expert opinions and the fusion of these opinions. The experience feedback models and inference mechanisms are integrated in a commercial support tool for problem solving methodologies. The results obtained to this point have already led to the definition of the role of ‘‘Rex Manager’’ with principles of sustainable management for continuous improvement of industrial processes in companies

Integrating case-based reasoning and hypermedia documentation: an application for the diagnosis of a welding robot at Odense steel shipyard

Reliable and effective maintenance support is a vital consideration for the management within today's manufacturing environment. This paper discusses the development of a maintenance system for the world's largest robot welding facility. The development system combines a case-based reasoning approach for diagnosis with context information, as electronic on-line manuals, linked using open hypermedia technology. The work discussed in this paper delivers not only a maintenance system for the robot stations under consideration, but also a design framework for developing maintenance systems for other similar applications

Contingent Information Systems Development

Situated approaches based on project contingencies are becoming more and more an important research topic for information systems development organizations. The Information Services Organization, which was investigated, has recognized that it should tune its systems development approaches to the specific situation. A model has been developed, dealing with the matching between prevailing contingency factors and the preconditions of already existing situated approaches. Furthermore, a generic process model for systems development, including the information systems operations stage, is proposed. This model makes it possible to derive from it specific systems development strategies. A number of basic development strategies, specific for the Information Services Organization, are described. Preconditions, specific for this organization, are added to the standard situated approaches

Applications of Expert Systems in Transport

BACKGROUND Experienced judgement and specialist knowledge are essential to the proper specification, understanding and interpretation of data and computer analyses. The human expert has traditionally supplied this knowledge and judgement with the computer doing the necessary number-crunching. However, artificial intelligence (AI) research provides ways of embodying this knowledge and judgement within computer programs. Despite an early lead in the field, UK research and developmnent into AI techniques was held back in the 1970s when the then Science Research Council took the view that the 'combinatorial explosion' of possibilities would be an insurmountable obstacle to AI developent. But in America and Japan research continued, and the surge of interest in the 1980s has been a consequence of the 'Fifth Generation Computer' research programme initiated by Japan (Feigenbaum and McCorduck; 1984). This led in Europe to the ESPRIT programme of advanced technology research, and in the UK to the Alvey programme (Department of Industry, 1982). As a result, all sectors of industry have been encouraged to consider how such advanced technology can be applied, and the transport industry is no exception. This paper sets out to explain some of the relevant techniques in simple terms, and to describe a number of situations in which transport planning and operations might be helped through their use, illustrating this by reference to the pioneering work going on in transport applications in the USA, Britain and Australia

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

Constraint capture and maintenance in engineering design

The Designers' Workbench is a system, developed by the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) consortium to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, to ensure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company's design rule book(s). In the principal application discussed here, the evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Design rules are expressed as constraints over the domain ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench's knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a system, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. Further we hypothesize that in order to appropriately apply, maintain and reuse constraints, it is necessary to understand the underlying assumptions and context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to them as “application conditions” and these form a part of the rationale associated with the constraint. We propose a methodology to capture the application conditions associated with a constraint and demonstrate that an explicit representation (machine interpretable format) of application conditions (rationales) together with the corresponding constraints and the domain ontology can be used by a machine to support maintenance of constraints. Support for the maintenance of constraints includes detecting inconsistencies, subsumption, redundancy, fusion between constraints and suggesting appropriate refinements. The proposed methodology provides immediate benefits to the designers and hence should encourage them to input the application conditions (rationales)