This paper presents a generic intelligent system platform, namely INTEMOR (INTElligent Multimedia system for On-line Real-time application), for process operation support. INTEMOR is developed by combining artificial intelligence, computer system and information technology into a unified environment. It integrates various function modules to perform operation support tasks, including communication gateway, data processing and analysis, on-line process monitoring and diagnosis, on-line operation manual, equipment maintenance assistance, reasoning system, knowledge-base creator and multimedia interface. The industrial applications of INTEMOR on a boiler system and a chemical pulping process are illustrated.
Modern industrial systems have become more and more complex. Plant managers and operators have to deal with vast amount of raw data in production planning, maintenance scheduling and process operation. The data and information “overload” may cause the operators confusion, leading to cognitive errors. It is true especially in time critical situation, such as equipment failure. Operators may find it difficult to quickly detect, diagnose and correct the fault. The growing complex of industrial processes and the practical need for higher efficiency, greater flexibility, better product quality and lower cost have resulted in increasing requirements for enhanced operation and management support.
The advent of computer technology has allowed us to implement more advanced process control and management systems such as process operation support (POS) system. An operation support system generally consists of on-line operation manual, fault diagnosis, equipment maintenance management and multimedia interface. Extensive research on the related topics, such as fault diagnosis expert systems (Kramer, 1991), intelligent monitoring systems (Murdock & Hayes-Roth, 1991) and knowledge-based maintenance systems (Berzonsky, 1990), have been done on chemical processes, electronic devices and mechanical equipment. The systems of such kind have shown significant benefits to the industries.
In the past decade, many different methods have been applied in developing operation support systems. Neural networks, because of their capability of learning complex and nonlinear relations, have attracted much attention in real-time data calibration, model identification of poorly-understood or complex systems (Leonard & Kramer, 1993). Rule-based expert systems can be used in solving engineering problems that depend heavily on experts’ experience. However, it is difficult to maintain and extend the knowledge-base (Vargas & Raj, 1993). Case-based reasoning (CBR) shows a great deal of promise for use in diagnostic systems (Stottler, 1994 and Gonzalez et al., 1998). CBR uses past problem-solving knowledge, including success or failure results, to find a solution to new problems. It reflects domain experts’ experience and natural problem solving. However, the CBR system is generally difficult to solve novel problems. Each individual method has its advantage in one situation, but has limitations in another. The integration of various methods will provide superior result by compensating the limitation of the individual methods.
Integrated distributed intelligent system technology was proposed for the above purpose (Rao, 1991, Rao et al., 1993, Rao et al., 1996 and Danielson et al., 1995). It is intended to: (i) integrate various problem solving methods, such as rule-based, model-based and CBR methods, as well as neural networks; (ii) integrate various types and levels of knowledge representation, such as integrating rule sets, past solved problems, process models and real-time data in an object-oriented environment; and (iii) integrate multiple problem solving tasks and application systems, such as condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and maintenance support (Ursenbach, Wang & Rao, 1994).
In this paper, an intelligent POS system platform, INTEMOR (INTElligent Multimedia system for On-line Real-time application), is developed based on the integrated distributed intelligence technology. It integrates condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and analysis, information management, on-line manual and maintenance support in a unified system environment. INTEMOR employs multiple knowledge representation, combines forward chain, backward chain and CBR mechanics, and runs in a real-time distributed environment. Industrial applications of INTEMOR in a power plant and a chemical pulping process are presented.
An integrated distributed intelligent system architecture for process operation support system and its implementation platform (INTEMOR) have been developed in this paper. Its system functions include data processing, condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and analysis, troubleshooting, equipment maintenance and on-line help. Two applications developed with INTEMOR are presented. With various computing technologies in implementation, our developed system is fully integrated with technologies and facilities available at the plant site, such as DCS (Fisher Provox) and MIS. The proposed system architecture has also been successfully used in other industrial processes such as a mining truck maintenance support system.
