Applications: SpecialtyBoard Plant

A knowledge-based system for the operation and maintenance of a SpecialtyBoard manufacturing plant.

The Manufacturing Facility

The MacMillan Bloedel SpecialtyBoard manufacturing plant in Richmond, B.C., Canada applies a variety of specialized coatings to particle board produced at their K3 manufacturing facility. The products of the SpecialtyBoard plant are used for bookshelves, furniture, kitchen cupboards, etc.

The Information Problem

A classic application of expert systems technology is to capture the knowledge of people before they retire or transfer to another position. The SpecialtyBoard application is an example of this.

Due to high staff turn-around and a reorganization of divisional personnel, a situation arose at the SpecialtyBoard plant where comprehensive operational know-how and training capability for the facility was exclusive to two senior employees that were due to retire.

The work that we performed at the SpecialtyBoard plant was aimed at two objectives: to document the procedures inherent in the routine operation of the facility, and to provide a vehicle for the training and upgrading of personnel.

The Knowledge-Based System

The Acquire^® automated knowledge acquisition system was used to acquire and document the knowledge for start-up, clean-up and setup of the SpecialtyBoard Plant Coating Line. The coating line involved various idiosyncratic machine centres, whose operational parameters changed with the coating to be applied.

Acquire^® guided the analysis of the overall problem and structuring of the knowledge. The operations and maintenance knowledge was defined by the retiring experts, thereby improving the comprehensibility of the resultant knowledge base.

This knowledge acquisition process represented the first occasion in which the collective maintenance expertise and documentation was available from a single source. The system, at this point, provided the SpecialtyBoard Plant with the benefit of a stand alone expert system application which could consistently provide quality maintenance and operations advice.

The Knowledge-Based Tutoring System

To fully address the training needs of the facility, Acquire^®ITS – an application independent environment for the rapid development of intelligent, knowledge-based, tutoring systems – was employed.

Utilizing the Acquire^® knowledge base and inference engine, the training system provided task oriented knowledge to trainees. The trainee was introduced to the entire SpecialtyBoard process, and then to detailed information about each of the component machine centres. Because the tutoring system was based on historical information and expert knowledge, the trainee had the advantage of an intern-like learning experience of actual maintenance situations.

Conclusion

This application has shown that effective tools exist for addressing industrial management concerns. Through the use of a combination of knowledge-based technologies (Acquire^® and Acquire^®ITS) the operational know-how for the SpecialtyBoard plant was preserved and transformed into both a system for the training of personnel as well as electronic documentation of plant operations.

The knowledge base and its tutorial counterpart were built in one year with only part-time involvement of the experts.