The ballarat incremental knowledge engine
- Authors: Dazeley, Richard , Warner, Philip , Johnson, Scott , Vamplew, Peter
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper pressented at 11th International Workshop on Knowledge Management and Acquisition for Smart Systems and Services, PKAW 2010 Vol. 6232 LNAI, p. 195-207
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- Description: Ripple Down Rules (RDR) is a maturing collection of methodologies for the incremental development and maintenance of medium to large rule-based knowledge systems. While earlier knowledge based systems relied on extensive modeling and knowledge engineering, RDR instead takes a simple no-model approach that merges the development and maintenance stages. Over the last twenty years RDR has been significantly expanded and applied in numerous domains. Until now researchers have generally implemented their own version of the methodologies, while commercial implementations are not made available. This has resulted in much duplicated code and the advantages of RDR not being available to a wider audience. The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive and extensible platform that supports current and future RDR technologies, thereby allowing researchers and developers access to the power and versatility of RDR. This paper is a report on the current status of the project and marks the first release of the software. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Application of Markov Process technique for optimal maintenance in a power station
- Authors: Gunawan, Indra , Patel, Deepak
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: GSTF Journal of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research Vol. 1, no. 1 (2012), p. 99-104
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Maintenance, reliability and availability of Pulverised Fuel Mills are of vital importance for the effective and efficient running of boiler at any brown coal power station. Achieving these targets become more critical when the unit boiler and turbine have been upgraded with no major upgrade on mills. Mill redundancy play major role in overall boiler operation and performance. In this paper, present mill operating strategy at Loy Yang Power station is challenged and revised strategy is proposed with strong evidences proved with the application of Markov Processes. Markov analysis is done at mill system level to establish the facts about the effects of mill operation on system availability. Short term and long term benefits of revised strategy are also discussed. Management is now convinced and actual trials have started. Mill maintenance strategies shall be reviewed and revised based on this work. It is also expected to gain considerable savings on mill maintenance costs in coming years if proposed operating strategy is adopted.
Development of hydraulic models for a complex and large scale water distribution system in regional Australia
- Authors: Mala-Jetmarova, Helena , Schwarz, S. , Barton, Andrew , Le Roux, S , Smalley, P. , Gerke, S.
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text: false
- Description: Hydraulic simulation models have become a valuable tool to manage water distribution networks commencing from their initial design through their operation, assessment of the level of service to customers, system performance improvement, analysis of planning alternatives, to system optimisation. The development of hydraulic models can be a time consuming task with complex and large scale water distribution networks being particularly challenging. The Wimmera Mallee Pipeline (WMP) in Western Victoria, Australia is a recently constructed and unique regional scale water distribution system which consists of over 8,800 km of pressurised pipelines spreading across an area of approximately 20,000 km 2. Currently, the WMP provides water to 34 townships, rural farms and other water users across the Wimmera Mallee region with an annual design capacity of 31.6 mil. m 3. The WMP sources its water from multiple reservoirs in the Grampians mountain ranges in the south and the River Murray in the north. Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water (GWMWater) is the local water organisation responsible for managing the WMP. GWMWater is currently initiating the development of a water market to generate and support growth, and to ensure that water is available for the highest value social, economic or environmental use. The hydraulic models discussed in this paper will assure that informed decisions are made by GWMWater regarding the capacity to deliver water through the pipeline system, and therefore the extent of trade by customers. The philosophy for development of the WMP hydraulic models was to replicate the real system as credibly as possible into the level of required accuracy for decision making, yet enable simple model operation, maintenance and update. The network is modelled to the individual customer level in order to accommodate small diameter pipes. Modelling at this level simplifies the future model maintenance and updates, and also ensures the compatibility with other GWMWater's systems such as Geographic Information System (GIS) and the customer database. A major part of the model development consisted of data preparation. This was undertaken by using "as constructed" GIS asset data captured during the WMP construction and entered into a GIS database (ArcGIS by ESRI). Due to the scale of the system and associated amounts of data, it was essential to develop sophisticated data transformation and validation procedures to simplify the model build which thereby minimised manual data entry and potential sources of errors. This paper focuses on the methodologies and techniques used in data preparation for hydraulic models and development of hydraulic models. An example is also provided of how the models will be used as a decision support tool in water supply and allocation planning.
Life cycle management of railway bridges - defect management
- Authors: Nielsen, Dwayne , Chattopadhyay, Gopinath , Raman, Dhamodharan
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: CORE2012 : Global Perspectives ; Conference on Railway Engineering, 10-12 September 2012, Brisbane p. 425-434
- Full Text: false
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- Description: A large number of Australian rail bridges were constructed over 80 years ago and the rail industry is suffering from their ever increasing maintenance costs and continued budget constraints. Making informed decisions for condition assessment, cost effective inspection, maintenance including repairs, upgrades and replacements with inadequate and sometimes inaccurate data and limited resource is a major challenge. Moreover, this limited access to actual data causes a great level of uncertainty in the management of railway bridges. In addition, bridge managers are expected to maintain these assets at specified performance levels with ongoing budget cuts and resource constraints. On the other hand, there is an increasing demand for bulk material transport leading to increasing axle loads to cope up with capacity constraints. Because of these reasons it is currently taking staff a longer time to plan and prepare maintenance budgets, analyse, interpret and take decisions for bridge life management. Most of the available bridge management systems are generic and analyse faults at the system level. In many cases, a detailed analysis at the level of individual components is needed to have a better understanding of potential root causes and focussed decision on bridge life extension. Consequently, a research project is being conducted on this issue and this paper proposes a practical bridge life management decision model using degradations, defect initiation and growth, maintenance options and relevant costs. The objective is to provide a practical, cost effective and user-friendly way to make maintenance decisions. The outcome of this research is a faster, more accurate system for informed decision making capability for cost effective life cycle management of railway bridges.
Application of Markov process technique for optimal maintenance in a power station
- Authors: Patel, Deepak , Gunawan, Indra
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Asset Management Conference Vol. 1, p. 99-104
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Maintenance, reliability and availability of Pulverised Fuel Mills are of vital importance for the effective and efficient running of boiler at any brown coal power station. Achieving these targets become more critical when the unit boiler and turbine have been upgraded with no major upgrade on mills. Mill redundancy play major role in overall boiler operation and performance. In this paper, present mill operating strategy at Loy Yang Power station is challenged and revised strategy is proposed with strong evidences proved with the application of Markov Processes. Markov analysis is done at mill system level to establish the facts about the effects of mill operation on system availability. Short term and long term benefits of revised strategy are also discussed. Management is now convinced and actual trials have started. Mill maintenance strategies shall be reviewed and revised based on this work. It is also expected to gain considerable savings on mill maintenance costs in coming years if proposed operating strategy is adopted.
Maintenance decisions for inground decay of power-supply timber poles
- Authors: Rahman, Anisur , Chattopadhyay, Gopinath , Hossain, Md Jahangir
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery Vol. 31, no. 3 (2016), p. 1106-1111
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Timber poles are widely used for distributing electricity in rural areas, mainly in developing countries. The improved reliability of timber poles is extremely important as the breakdown or failure of any one of these poles can result in millions of dollars in lost revenue and restoration costs. The losses can include production loss, loss of property, or even loss of life. The reliability of such poles depends on a complex combination of age, usage, durability of timber, environmental factors influencing the deterioration process, and most important, maintenance actions carried out through the lifecycle of the poles. This paper focuses on developing an optimal maintenance model that predominantly captures the inground decay of timber poles, and on developing a mechanism for measuring these factors. The developed maintenance model is then illustrated with numerical examples. Analysis of failure data shows that most of the failures of timber poles are due to a decrease in timber strength and peripheral dimensions at or below ground level. The results from this research could be useful for maintenance and replacement decisions regarding inground timber components used in the utility, construction, railway, and transportation sectors.
A scalable cloud Platform for Active healthcare monitoring applications
- Authors: Balasubramanian, Venki , Stranieri, Andrew
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 2014 IEEE Conference on e-Learning, e-Management and e-Services, IC3e 2014; Melbourne, Australia; 10th-12th December 2014 p. 93-98
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- Description: Continuous, remote monitoring of patients using wearable sensors can facilitate early detection of many conditions and can help to manage the growing healthcare crisis worldwide. A remote patient monitoring application consists of many emerging services such as wireless wearable sensor configuration, patient registration and authentication, collaborative consultation of doctors, storage and maintenance of electronic health record. The provision of these services requires the development and maintenance of a remote healthcare monitoring application (HMA) that includes a body area wireless sensor network (BASWN) and Health Applications (HA) to detect specific health issues. In addition, the deployment of HMAs for different hospitals is not easily scalable owing to the heterogeneous nature of hardware and software involved. Cloud computing overcomes this aspect by allowing simple and easy maintenance of ICT infrastructure. In this work, we report a real-time-like cloud based architecture known as Assistive Patient monitoring cloud Platform for Active healthcare applications (AppA) using a delegate pattern. The built AppA is highly scalable and capable of spawning new instances based on monitoring requirements from the health care providers, and are aligned with scalable economic models. © 2014 IEEE.
AppA : Assistive patient monitoring cloud platform for active healthcare applications
- Authors: Balasubramanian, Venki , Stranieri, Andrew , Kaur, Ranjit
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication, ACM IMCOM 2015; Bali, Indonesia; 8th-10th January 2015
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- Description: Continuous, remote monitoring of patients using wearable sensors can facilitate early detection of many conditions and can help to manage the growing healthcare crisis worldwide. A remote patient monitoring application consists of many emerging services such as wireless wearable sensor configuration, patient registration and authentication, collaborative consultation of doctors, storage and maintenance of electronic health record. The provision of these services requires the development and maintenance of a remote healthcare monitoring application (HMA) that includes a body area wireless sensor network (BASWN) and Health Applications (HA) to detect specific health issues. In addition, the deployment of HMAs for different hospitals is not easily scalable owing to the heterogeneous nature of hardware and software involved. Cloud computing overcomes this aspect by allowing simple and easy maintenance of ICT infrastructure. In this work, we report a realtime- like cloud based architecture known as Assistive Patient monitoring cloud Platform for Active healthcare applications (AppA) using a delegate pattern. The built AppA is highly scalable and capable of spawning new instances based on the monitoring requirements from the health care providers, and is aligned with scalable economic models.
A framework for ERP post-implementation amendments : A literature analysis
- Authors: Oseni, Taiwo , Foster, Susan , Rahim, Mahbubur , Smith, Stephen Patrick
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Information Systems Vol. 21, no. (2017), p.
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- Description: Post-implementation amendments to ERP systems (ERP-PIA) are of importance for advancing ERP research, but more importantly essential if ERP systems are to be used as a strategic and competitive business tool. For ease of clarity, we have adopted the term “amendments” to encompass the main forms of post implementation activities: maintenance, enhancements and upgrades. The term “amendments” is used to counteract one of the major findings from this research - the inconsistency of terms used by many authors to explain post implementation activities. This paper presents a review of the ERP post-implementation amendment literature in order to provide answers to two specific questions: first, what is the current state of research in the field of ERP-PIA; and second, what are the future research directions that need to be explored in the field of ERP-PIA. From the review, we develop a framework to identify: (a) major themes concerning ERP post-implementation amendments, (b) inherent gaps in the post-implementation amendments literature, and (c) specific areas that require further research attention influencing the uptake of amendments. Suggestions on empirical evaluation of research directions and their relevance in the extension of existing literature is presented.
Impact of quality management tools and techniques : case of Namibian municipal water distributors
- Authors: Silombela, Timothy , Mutingi, Michael , Chakraborty, Ayon
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering Vol. 24, no. 1 (2018), p. 2-21
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- Description: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding on the impact of quality management (QM) tools and techniques in water supply infrastructure maintenance and the generation of non-revenue water (NRW) by Namibian Municipal Water Distributors. Design/methodology/approach - In-depth interviews were selected as the primary data collection method, while secondary data were collected using document review and observations. In-depth interviews as primary method provided rich data and details on the subject matter from the respondents. Document review and observations provided a holistic perspective and understanding of the context within which the maintenance projects are handled by municipal water distributors. Findings - The study found that as the number of QM tools employed to analyze maintenance data increases, the generation of NRW by the municipality decreases. However, for the tools to be effective, they should cover applications such as problem identification, data analysis, process analysis, decision making, planning, quality control and statistical process control, this helped Namibian municipalities to produce low volumes of NRW. In contrast, municipalities using QM tools arbitrarily lead to high quantities of NRW generation. Originality/value - The World Bank recommends that NRW should be less than 25 percent of the total water produced, while in many countries NRW is up to 60 percent. Developed economies have made efforts to reduce NRW but efforts are still at nascent stage in emerging economies. This is the first study providing evidences of QM tools application in maintenance process and effect on NRW. © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited.
Maintenance and asset management practices of industrial assets : importance of tribological practices and digital tools
- Authors: Pai, Raghuvir , Chattopadhyay, Gopinath , Karmakar, Gour
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking Vol. 13, no. 2 (2023), p. 233-256
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- Description: There are a large number of rotating and sliding parts in industrial assets. Tribological behaviour plays a significant role in influencing friction and wear, and in turn, the life of these parts. There are issues and challenges in understanding the tribological aspects and behaviour of machine components by maintenance professionals so that informed decisions can taken to improve performance and productivity. An understanding of tribology helps in developing and applying the tools and techniques necessary for better maintenance. In recent years, remote performance monitoring (RPM), internet of things (IoT), machine learning, artificial intelligence and data analytics have made a significant contribution to maintenance and asset management. This paper reviews the tribological aspects related to maintenance, reliability and asset management. The findings of this study will be useful to engineers and managers to understand and appreciate the relationship between tribology, maintenance, reliability and availability for better asset management. Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Validation framework of bayesian networks in asset management decision-making
- Authors: Morey, Stephen , Chattopadhyay, Gopinath , Larkins, Jo-ann
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: International Congress and Workshop on Industrial AI, IAI 2021, Virtual online, 6-7 October 2021, published in Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering p. 360-369
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- Description: Capital-intensive industries are under increasing pressure from capital constraints to extend the life of long-life assets and to defer asset renewals. Assets in most of those industries have complex life-cycle management challenges in aspects of design, manufacture, maintenance and service contracts, the usage environment, and changes in support personnel over the asset life. A significant challenge is the availability and quality of relevant data for informed decision-making in assuring reliability, availability and safety. There is a need for better-informed maintenance decisions and cost-effective interventions in managing the risk and assuring performance of those assets. Bayesian networks have been considered in asset management applications in recent years for addressing these challenges, by modelling of reliability, maintenance decisions, life extension and prognostics, across a wide range of technological domains of complex assets. However, models of long-life assets are challenging to validate, particularly due to issues with data scarcity and quality. A literature review on Bayesian networks in asset management in this paper shows that there is a need for further work in this area. This paper discusses the issues and challenges of validation of Bayesian network models in asset management and draws on findings from literature research to propose a preliminary validation framework for Bayesian network models in life-cycle management applications of capital-intensive long-life assets. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.