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Hypermedia with enhanced linking providing maintenance and analysis tools for engineering

Objective



Reliable, effective maintenance support is a vital consideration for the suppliers of modern industrial machinery. Maintenance is now a strategic issue that brings competitive advantages for equipment manufacturers. Companies frequently gather extensive data to track the history of their machines, but this data is rarely used for trouble shooting. The issues associated with the maintenance of complex machinery are many and complex.
The HELPMATE project demonstrates that the combination of advanced hypermedia information management tools and case-based reasoning tools can reduce the costs associated with maintenance of industrial machinery in two ways:
- increasing the reliability of the machinery, and thereby decreasing down-time;
- increasing the quality of the work performed by the machine.
This will be achieved by combining proven, leading edge multimedia and hypermedia information management technology with case-based reasoning tools, to provide a sophisticated system which can deliver all the relevant information at the point of use. The trial application supports operator-minded maintenance within a high technology production facility -a robot welding installation- at Odense Steel Shipyard.
The technologies required to provide this support already exist in the form of two ITEA '95 finalists-Microcosm is a hypermedia information management system, and KATE is a set of case-based reasoning tools, both of which have already been used in isolation to provide partial solutions for industrial maintenance tasks. The combination of these two award-winning technologies significantly increases the functionality available from such systems.
The HELPMATE Consortium brings together organisations from three EU nations; all are leaders in their fields with international reputations and highly complementary business and technical objectives. Odense Steel Shipyards (DK) is one of the world's leading manufacturers of large commercial ships and provides a very strong end-user drive for the project, as maintenance support systems for its advanced production facilities is an absolute requirement for effective operation. Technological input comes from AcknoSoft (F) and Multicosm (UK). Both provide software products which have been recognised as excellent by the European IT community. The PAC (UK) provides skills to enable the effective deployment of leading-edge information technologies, and provides project management and systems integration expertise.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

Odense Steel Shipyard
EU contribution
No data
Address
P.O. Box 176
5100 Odense C
Denmark

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Total cost
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Participants (3)