Intelligent assistance systems are designed to help plant operators quickly resolve production interruptions due to unscheduled plant shutdowns. To see it work, visit the VDMA Technology Lounge in hall 5 / J38, where the VDMA presents ideas and solutions for tomorrow’s machines in cooperation with partners from industry, science and research.
Despite the increasing degree of automation in processing and packaging systems, process disruptions cannot be completely avoided, which is why experienced plant operators with high process understanding are still needed for a stable process management. Precisely these, however, are missing in the job market. The reasons for this are high staff fluctuation and often enough the very low level of training new employees have to offer. To tackle this problem, researchers from the Fraunhofer IVV Dresden, in collaboration with the Department for Engineering Psychology and Applied Cognitive Research as well as the Department for Process Control Technology at the Dresden University of Technology are developing an operator assistance system capable of learning.
Different states of an installation can lead to anomalies in the switching patterns of the system sensors. Using machine learning algorithms, the researchers bring these patterns into stochastic relationships with the machine and process states. Using condition monitoring data, they classified records with up to 20,000 entries on the basis of specifically created disturbances. It is decisive here to define relevant features and to exclude spurious correlations. The goal is an assistance system that will increase its own vocabulary and knowledge about causal correlations. To achieve this, the system will stay in dialogue with the operator using conversation and interview strategies. As a result, the system will provide appropriate suggestions for problem-solving – like an expert system. Furthermore, it is intended to accelerate the learning process of the operators and thus enable them to understand more complex disturbances more quickly and to develop independently suitable solution strategies.
Advantages for operators: The assistance system greatly increases the efficiency of plants. In addition, it provides valuable information on the optimization of production, subsequent plant expansions and, based on the information stored in the database, it offers measures within the context of predictive maintenance.
Interested visitors will be able to find out about these and other innovations, as well as practical research results from the partner companies, at the VDMA stand in Hall 5 / J38.
