A multi-agents based E-maintenance system with case-based reasoning decision support

Abstract

Today, one challenge of a manufacturer is to maintain with the consumer, the expected service of the supplied product during the whole product life cycle, no matter where the product and the consumer are located. The combination of modern information processing and communication tools, commonly referred to as Tele-service, offers the technical support required to implement this remote service maintenance. However, this technical support is insufficient to face new remote maintenance decision-makings which requires not only informational exchanges between customers and suppliers but also cooperation and negotiation based on the sharing of different complementary and/or contradictory knowledge. It requires an evolution from Tele-service to E-service and e-Maintenance in particular where the maintenance decision-making results from collaboration of maintenance processes and experts to form a DAI environment. For this purpose, a Problem-Oriented Multi-Agent-Based E-Service System (POMAESS) is introduced in this paper. The protocol of negotiation for multi agents and the CBR-based decision support function within this system are discussed, emphasised at the service maintenance problem solving. A prototype system based on these methodologies is developed to demonstrate the feasibility.

Agent-Based Systems for Manufacturing

“…Modern communication technologies have made dramatic impacts on remote monitoring and maintenance. The emaintenance platform named POMAESS (ProblemOriented Multi-Agent-based E-Service System) interconnects separated (reactive and cognitive) agents for collaborating in an open and time-constrained environment [141]. The platform supports the cooperation of different problem solving experts (human or autonomous machine) such as production management expert, maintenance expert and control expert.…”

Cloud-enabled prognosis for manufacturing

“…Similar studies can be found in [153]-a recommended fault type generated by a classification tool for a specific sensor signal, where the recommendation is based on previously classified cases in a case library. A problem-oriented multi-agent-based e-service system (POMAESS) has been developed in [261] for remote maintenance decision-making. The decision-making process in POMAESS seeks technical support from informational exchanges between customers and suppliers as well as cooperation and negotiation based on the sharing of different complementary and contradictory knowledge.…”

An Intelligent Context-aware System for Logistics Asset Supervision Service

“…State-of-arts demonstrate that agent system are largely applied to support system supervision functions, which include condition monitoring [21], risk management [22], emaintenance [23] and so on. As such, agent technology is chosen as the key enabler for supervision system design, reasons are given as: (1) agent could cooperate and deploy on top of existing software.…”