Decision Support for Root Cause Analysis in Industrial Environments

Abstract

This paper describes an internet-based decision support system for industrial services. The online environment rc@s provides a comprehensive modellibrary, which helps in operation and maintenance to get rid of problems in industrial environments. Rc@s is based on RCA methodology employing three different failure models i.e., process failures, equipment failures and basic failures. The models are stored in a library that contains catalogues of different industries. Typical industries are steel, pulp ' paper and petrochemicals. Each of these models has three layers: process and equipment layer, fault trees and verification checklists. These models for root cause analysis are implemented in XML-technology, which gives high flexibility in user interaction and enables platform and device independent information presentation.