Affiliations: [a] Electrical Engineering Department, Memphis State University, Memphis, TN 38152 | [b] Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208
Abstract: Computer-aided failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a goal of design, manufacturing, and reliability engineers to improve the quality and reliability of systems; however, commercial implementations have utilized little or no artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in their design. Computer-aided FMEA is viewed from an AI perspective. First, the types of knowledges exploited by FMEA experts are discussed, and model-based methods that are applicable to intelligent automation are addressed to provide a foundation for building expert systems for design and reliability analysis. Next, existing prototype systems and techniques are characterized, according to their knowledge and reasoning strategies, to familiarize the reader with recent developments. In addition, a blackboard model of an expert system for FMEA is proposed that functionally decomposes the knowledge associated with each subfunction of the FMEA process into a set of knowledge sources.
