An analytical-heuristic approach for automated analysis of dependency losses and root cause of malfunctions in interlinked manufacturing systems

The analysis and optimization of interlinked manufacturing systems is challenging mainly due to dynamic interdependencies of system components. This paper presents a method to automatically identify downtimes and to determine their causes in interlinked manufacturing systems. The method helps to retrace the root cause of dependency losses, even if the root cause is not stopped. Furthermore data mining techniques are used to identify workpiece-specific root causes of malfunctions and scrap as well as temporal correlations between downtimes.