Integrating case-based reasoning and hypermedia documentation: an application for the diagnosis of a welding robot at Odense steel shipyard

Reliable and effective maintenance support is a vital consideration for the management within today's manufacturing environment. This paper discusses the development of a maintenance system for the world's largest robot weldi ng facility. The development system combines a case-based reasoning approac h for diagnosis with context information, as electronic on-line manuals, li nked using open hypermedia technology. The work discussed in this paper del ivers nor only a maintenance system for the robot stations under considerat ion, but also a design framework for developing maintenance systems for oth er similar applications. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved .