A real-time decision-making of maintenance using fuzzy agent

In many manufacturing processes, real-time information can be obtained from process control computers and other monitoring devices. However, production control problems are frequently accompanied by certain and uncertain conditions. Problems with uncertainty conditions generally include difficulty in identifying an optimal solution in real-time using conventional mathematical approaches. This study presents a fuzzy logic approach for decision-making of maintenance. Some linguistic variables and rules-of-thumb are used to form the fuzzy logic models, based on the domain experts’ experiences in production line and maintenance department. The historical production data are used to train and tune the fuzzy models. The tuned fuzzy models are then embedded into an internet-based and event-oriented information system as fuzzy agent. The production controller can easily make suitable production control decisions based on the inference results of fuzzy agents to satisfy the quick response requirement.