Integrated maintenance management system in a textile company

In this paper, an AI (artificial intelligence) approach to the design and control of an integrated maintenance management system is reported. The research work has been done on two levels. At the managerial level, the overall maintenance management system is designed by the GRAI method. This system is designed as an integrated system which makes decisions on maintenance activity scheduling and control, taking into consideration not only equipment working conditions but also maintenance cost, product quality, and production efficiency. At the decision support level, a number of intelligent decision support systems (IDSSs) are developed based on Bayesian theory or causal probabilistic networks (CPNs). In this paper, a generic CPN for the maintenance of open-end spinning mills is reported.