Re-Engineering Paper Technical Manual's Troubleshooting Procedures

摘要

As the Department of Defense (DoD) downsizes there is a great need to reduce the cost and manpower burden associated with maintenance of weapon systems. Traditionally, technical manuals used for field maintenance of DoD systems have relied heavily on troubleshooting procedures, which are presented in 'flow chart' format of fault trees. These flow charts guide the maintainer through test procedures to isolate parts that cause equipment malfunction. These procedures are static, that is, they are highly structured around a predetermined sequence of tests, do not become 'smarter' over time with historical maintenance data, and only take into account those symptoms and faults which the original developer considered. They are often incomplete, sometimes wrong, and are very difficult to update and maintain. As maintenance evolved into the computer-assisted age, a major opportunity exists to significantly enhance the technical manuals, the basic logic, and information/ knowledge representation underlying troubleshooting procedures. This paper provides the high lights of research and development results on the technical aspects as how to efficiently transition from flow-chart intensive knowledge representation to a knowledge-based system. The results of reengineering the legacy trouble-shooting procedures provides, at least, the following benefits: (1) replacing fault trees with knowledge based reasoning about faults related to symptoms; (2) providing the capability to dynamically relate faults to symptoms; (3) equipping the ability to use historical maintenance data to continuously improve maintenance capability; (4) providing more user-friendly interactive electronic technical manuals; and (5) providing the ability to house 'expert' diagnostics information in a form that becomes usable and available to novice technicians.