15 Expert Systems in Condition Monitoring

Increasing global competition, rapid technological change, consumers' desire for total quality, reliability, health and safety, environmental considerations and changes in management structure provide many companies with plenty of opportunities to improve their performance and competitive edge. This means that those companies that strategically plan for the future and fully exploit the advantages of modern manufacturing techniques are bound to succeed [1].

The operational reliability of machines and instruments is becoming a crucial factor in competitiveness and applications where safety and availability are important [2]. One general trend in industry is to develop larger and more integrated technical systems with an increased degree of automation. Such a trend can be observed in manufacturing, energy production and transportation. However, as systems increase in size they become more difficult to control, more sensitive and vulnerable to the serious consequences of failures and breakdowns. This can result in economic risks in manufacturing industry, safety risks for people in transportation, and environmental risks in the nuclear and processing industries.

Today a great variety of techniques and technologies are available to improve the operational reliability and maintainability of machines and instruments. These include technical fields such as management technologies, material science, design calculations, monitoring techniques and methods for processing information [3, 4].