Delivering diagnostic solutions with COTS expert systems; a case study

More and more organizations are realizing the tremendous cost involved in the maintenance of increasingly complex equipment. Developing diagnostic solutions in-house is highly challenging and very expensive task and the only way to support the development is to re-use tools in many different projects. In recent years, COTS solutions have appeared and proved their mettle in actual use. Serviceability of equipment is crucial to the performance and readiness of the whole organization, which means that downtime must be minimal at all times. In order to shorten the equipment downtime, two conditions most be met. First, the system under test most be testable enough to give the service technicians all the information needed to quickly and accurately diagnose faults, or to determine that the equipment is fully operational by passing all acceptance tests. All of these test activities must be available for easy access, operation and interpretation, often under difficult field conditions and time pressures. Second, the service technician must have enough experience and knowledge to use the information supplied by the different test tools, whether BIT, external test equipment or manual, so that diagnosis is reached efficiently and effectively. Both conditions must be met to provide a good solution for today's service problems. In this paper, we describe the implementation of an innovative test solution mounted on the vehicle itself. The solution is based on a COTS test and diagnostics tool that supplies guidance, recommendation and intelligent on-line documentation.