METHODS FOR PRODUCING CUSTOMER CONFIGURABLE TECHNICAL MANUALS

• US 20150248611A1
• Filed: 02/28/2014
• Published: 09/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: vanderZweep, Jeff, Felke, Tim, Begur, Nagabhushana Rao, Dvorak, Zdenek, Mikulka, David, Bandstra, Ronald, Jurica, Dalibor
• Granted Patent: US 9,715,658 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0766 Error or fault reporting or storing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other groups of this subclass
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/20 Administration of product repair or maintenance

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided for generating a maintainer troubleshooting tree from the content of a digitally stored fault model of a complex system in real time. The method comprises retrieving all failure modes from a fault model of the complex system for a specific corrective action. The method then receives symptoms from sensors monitoring the complex system in real time and generates a symptom pattern and an associated symptom hash from the received symptoms. The method creates san ambiguity group from the retrieved failure modes. The method further retrieves all repair procedures and test procedures related to the ambiguity group of failure modes, creates a troubleshooting tree for the ambiguity group by ranking each repair procedure and test procedure, and retrieves all technical references encountered while creating the trouble shooting tree. The method then compiles and renders the troubleshooting tree and the references into a user perceivable document.

n

Claims

1. A method to automatically generate a maintainer useable troubleshooting tree from content of a digitally stored fault model of a complex system in real time, the method comprising:

for a specific corrective action, retrieve failure modes associated with a corrective action from a fault model of the complex system by a processor;

receive in symptoms in real time from sensors monitoring the complex system;

generate a symptom pattern and an associated symptom hash from the received symptoms;

for the symptom pattern, create an ambiguity group of failure modes from the retrieved failure modes;

retrieve repair procedures and test procedures related to the ambiguity group of failure modes from the fault model;

create a troubleshooting tree for the ambiguity group of failure modes by ranking each repair procedure and test procedure;

retrieve technical references encountered while creating the trouble shooting tree; and

compile and render the troubleshooting tree and the references into a user perceivable document based on a standard technical manual skeleton data structure configured to record the trouble shooting tree and the references.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the symptom pattern is a concatenation of unique keys, and each unique key uniquely identifies a symptom.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each unique key is separated by a delimiting character.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein a hash value is derived from the symptom pattern by applying a hash function to the delimited symptom pattern.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein when a first hash value and a first symptom pattern of a first failure mode are both identical to a second symptom pattern and a second hash value of a second failure mode, wherein the method further comprises changing the delimiting character of one of the first and second symptom patterns.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the ambiguity group of failure modes is determined by:

retrieving all failure modes with the same hash value;

when no two failure modes have the same hash value, setting an ambiguity indicator flag to “

no ambiguity”

;

when two or more failure modes have the same hash value, setting the ambiguity indicator flag to “

ambiguity”

.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising retrieving Corrective Actions from the fault model and creating a logical relationship between the Corrective Actions and the failure mode(s) associated with Corrective Actions as established in the fault model.

8. A system for automatically generating a maintainer useable trouble shooting tree from content of a digitally stored fault model of a complex system in real time comprising:

a processor;

a plurality of sensors configured to monitor the complex system and to supply symptom data in real time to the processor;

a memory device containing the digitally stored fault model of the complex system in communication with the processor; and

an output device configured to render the maintainer useable trouble shooting tree.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the processor is configured to create a symptom pattern comprising a concatenation of unique keys, each unique key uniquely identifying a symptom identified by one of the plurality of sensors.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein each unique key is separated by a delimiting character.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein a hash value is derived from the symptom pattern by applying a hash function to the delimited symptom pattern.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein when the hash value and the symptom pattern of a first failure mode are both identical to a symptom pattern and a hash value of a second failure mode, then changing the delimiting character of the symptom pattern of one of the first or the second failure modes.

13. A tangible, non-transitory computer readable medium containing instructions that when executed perform the steps of:

retrieving all failure modes associated with a corrective action from a fault model of a complex system by a processor;

receiving symptoms from sensors monitoring the complex system in real time;

generating a symptom pattern and an associated symptom hash from the received symptoms;

for the symptom pattern, create an ambiguity group from the failure modes;

retrieving all repair procedures and test procedures related to the ambiguity group from the fault model;

creating a troubleshooting tree for the ambiguity group by ranking each repair procedure and test procedure;

retrieving all technical references encountered while creating the trouble shooting tree; and

compiling and rendering the troubleshooting tree and the references into a user perceivable document based on a standard technical manual skeleton data structure configured to record the trouble shooting tree and the references.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein the processor is configured to create a symptom pattern comprising a concatenation of unique keys, each unique key uniquely identifying a symptom identified by one of the plurality of sensors.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 14, wherein each unique key is separated by a delimiting character.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein a hash value is derived from the symptom pattern by applying a hash function to the delimited symptom pattern.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein when the hash value and the symptom pattern of a first failure mode are both identical to a symptom pattern and a hash value of a second failure mode, then changing the delimiting character of the symptom pattern of one of the first or the second failure modes.