An expert system architecture for switching system diagnosis

The authors present the architecture of a troubleshooting expert system called SHOOTX, for the NEC NEAX61-series telephone switching system. It helps inexperienced maintenance technicians to perform diagnosis tasks. Modeled on human experts' diagnosis methods, it enables location and repair of a fault which cannot be detected by built-in diagnosis functions. It figures out the suspected components, based on an abstract signal-flow model of the target switching system. Since several kinds of knowledge are represented in a unified network, the knowledge base is compact and modifiable. The authors also describe the user-oriented man-machine interface. >