Rule-based troubleshooter design for the maintenance of manufacturing devices

A rule-based troubleshooter based on a zone-oriented design method is proposed for the maintenance of manufacturing devices. Through this approach, the behavior of manufacturing devices is classified into normal and abnormal operations under the State/Attribute/World/Zone (SAWZ) architecture. For the normal operations, a rule-based supervisor based on hierarchy transformation method (HTM) is used to control the behavior of manufacturing devices. For abnormal operations, the behavior of manufacturing devices is classified into four zones: quasi-normal, traceable, alert, and chaotic zones. The detection of normal and abnormal operations is done by a world-based monitor. The rule-based troubleshooter design depends upon the characteristics of each zone. In this paper, this rule-based troubleshooter design method is applied to improving the performance of a mold filling system.