Precision Knowledge Retrieval for Engineering Problem Solving, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and Root-Cause Analysis (RCA)
- Paper number
IAC-06-D5.1.06
- Author
Mr. Douglas Roberts, Northrop-Grumman Corporation, United States
- Year
2006
- Abstract
For over 50 years, the Navigation Systems Division (NSD) of the Northrop Grumman Corporation has designed, built, and delivered inertial navigation systems for aircraft, land and sea vehicles, and space applications. As a result, over 50 years of navigation documentation, including white papers, reports, analyses, memos, technical documents, design notes, etc. have been generated and reside in a multitude of different formats on a variety of platforms. NSD is using semantic indexing software technology to process this 50-year history, as well as a variety of other sources, both internal and external, so that it can be retrieved for engineering problem solving, FMEA, and RCA analysis. The software used to index the NSD history is the Goldfire technical research tool from the Invention Machine Corporation. The software semantically processes source documents, identifying over 35 different parts of speech. Because of this detail, a database is generated that can be queried in natural language format that is semantically matched to the source documents, providing precise answers to technical questions. And the knowledge sources are varied and robust, including content all the way from a user’s desktop documents and e-mail to Deep Web and Surface Web locations. This year’s release of Goldfire expands upon earlier Invention Machine semantic technology, processing source documents for additional knowledge base enrichment that adds both Cause-Effect and anaphoric resolution data to the semantic database. The presentation will describe the processing techniques, show how precise answers to technical questions are provided, and will demonstrate the software’s new capabilities to automate the construction of FMEA models and Root-Cause analysis models from the cause-effect relationships in the expanded database. NSD systems can be found on a variety of the most recent space exploration endeavors, including the Deep Impact, Cassini-Huygens, and twin Mars Rover missions, as well as the in-progress Messenger exploration of Mercury.
- Abstract document