A System for Mobile Maintenance Decission Support

The paper presents the development of a mobile maintenance support system based on Web and Mobile device technologies, i.e., PDA. The architecture relies on a shop floor system and a supporting system in a diagnostic centre. The shop floor system is supported by a Mobile device, i.e., PDA that helps the maintenance engineer in his execution of maintenance tasks. This gives great support to the maintenance engineer as it facilitates the access to decision making support, work order and spare part handling modules etc. that are available in the device. The diagnostic centre provides the maintenance engineer with decision support for his various tasks, when it is needed. Moreover, a database table listener agent, located at the database server, was developed to keep track of the maintenance engineers work orders with certain priority level. The proposed approach can reduce the maintenance costs and solve the problem of the unavailability of an expert. More efficient maintenance is believed to be achieved through the use of Web and Agent technologies since data, maintenance systems and process sing can be gathered, integrated as well as data acquisition can be done from additional sources when there is a need. The proposed system, the Web and embedded technologies, and remote communication were tested successfully.