Applications: The Sander

Applications: The Sander Advisor

A knowledge-based system for preventative maintenance of a particle board sander.

The Sander Advisor is available at http://www.myacquire.com/aiinc/sander/.

What can initially appear as enormously complex can ultimately be simple and straightforward when knowledge is used effectively. This system is one of our favorite applications of Acquire^®.

The Manufacturing Facility

The MacMillan Bloedel K3 ParticleBoard manufacturing plant in Richmond, B.C., Canada consists of a variety of very large machines, all linked together, each with a specific purpose. In short, wood chips and fibre are fed into the plant at one end and particle board emerges from the other end. If any one of the machines in the process malfunctions, the entire facility has to shut down.

The Sander

The particle board Sander at this plant is very unique and very complex. When this piece of equipment malfunctions, a specialist has to be brought in from Sweden to fix it. The downtime costs are enormous.

When we first worked with MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., looking for good expert system applications, we were told to forget about building a diagnostic system for the Sander. It was far too complex and no one at the plant knew it well enough to act as an expert.

Since this machine had caused such enormous problems in the past, it was reconsidered for a knowledge-based system application after we had completed a diagnostic application for another machine in the plant. We found that some maintenance and adjustment was performed on the Sander by plant staff. However, there was absolutely no documentation on how to perform this basic maintenance or the circumstances under which maintenance should be undertaken.

It was later learned that there was one fellow who had this knowledge. Through discussions with him, we discovered that when the Sander was getting out of adjustment it would leave a particular type of pattern on the board that was being processed. The type of pattern would indicate which part of the machine was getting out of adjustment.

The Sander System

We worked with this fellow for a morning and through the use of Acquire^® we built a tiny knowledge base for preventative maintenance. We discovered that if a problem was recognized early, a small adjustment would set everything right. If the problem was left to develop, the Sander would become increasingly out of adjustment to the point that the Swedish specialist was required and the plant would have to be shut down.

The knowledge base that was created represented the first documentation for preventative maintenance on the Sander. The knowledge base was so small that rather than running cases through the inference engine, the few rules were taped to the side of the Sander. In no time, all of the employees that worked with the Sander had read these rules, memorized them and were performing preventative maintenance procedures on the Sander. The result was a marked reduction in downtime due to Sander malfunction – and enormous cost savings.

Conclusion

This is one of the best examples of the effective use of the Acquire^® technology. This facility had operated with chronic maintenance problems and downtime from this Sander for 20 years before Acquire^® captured and documented the preventative maintenance knowledge. The tiny knowledge base was all it took to remove the overwhelming bulk of these problems and the resultant loss of revenues.

Knowledge is enormously powerful. Once acquired, represented and put to effective use, the benefits can be enormous. This Acquire^® application resulted in documentation of a hitherto unknown set of procedures, the entire staff was trained and a lot of money was saved.