Computer simulation of manufacturing system for exploration of human information needs and strategies in system fault diagnosis

To develop a cost-effective decision support system for system fault diagnosis, human information needs and diagnostic strategies should be investigated first. This paper presents the design of an experiment for such purpose. The experiment is carried out on the computer simulation of a manufacturing system. An abstraction hierarchy of information is used as the basis of developing the computer simulation of the manufacturing system. The abstraction hierarchy categorizes information pertaining to system function and operation into five levels, from concrete and specific to abstract and general: physical, logical, functional, conceptual, and objective. System fault events are captured on the computer simulation of the manufacturing system and presented to human subjects for fault diagnosis, information searching and decision making behavior, and performance of human subjects can be recorded on the computer for further analysis