Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2000-12-15
2003-09-23
Mizrahi, Diane D. (Department: 2175)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
active
06625618
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a maintenance manual interface system for easily identifying a reference paragraph of a maintenance manual according to a maintenance request information as well as a medium containing a computer program product constituting this system utilizing a personal computer or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Maintenance of a machine having numerous components and highly-sophisticated functions, especially maintenance of transportation means affecting human lives should be performed based on a manual issued by the manufacture of the machine.
In the case of an aviation company, a maintenance manual used for maintenance of an aircraft is prepared basically by a manufacturer of the aircraft, which has been corrected to a certain degree by the aviation company and submitted to a government. At the stage when the manual is approved by the government, the manual becomes an authorized maintenance manual (basic document).
However, since this maintenance manual has been basically prepared by the aircraft manufacturer, it contains sufficient information on technical data and specification associated with the respective components but it usually does not contain sufficient information on a maintenance procedure.
As a result, even when an error detector provided in an aircraft has identified an abnormal component, it may be difficult to find the place where the component is located. Moreover, even when the location is found, there may be no information on a procedure required for detaching and attaching the component.
Furthermore, when exchanging a component or ordering a component, a corresponding parts ID number should specified by referencing an illustrated parts catalogue contained in the manual issued by the aircraft manufacturer. This parts catalogue usually consists of enormous pages and is not always edited systematically. Accordingly, retrieval of an ID number requires a plenty of time. Moreover, some components (parts) look very similar to one another and there is often a case that an incorrect ID number is specified.
The basic reason causing such a problem is that during preparation of an original manual by an aircraft manufacturer, a stress is posed on the technical information and specification of respective components (parts), paying no attention on the relationship between those components or on the roles of the components for the entire aircraft. That is, the technical information is given in fragments.
Although a manual prepared by an aircraft manufacturing company also contains three-dimensional view drawings including showing an entire aircraft configuration, these drawings are drawn considering the aircraft simply as an inorganic structure. They simply express the configuration of the aircraft and arrangements of components strictly from the physical viewpoint and a maintenance engineer cannot know functional relationships between them.
Moreover, the drawings are so much detailed that lines drawn are overlaid and respective components appear in a small size scale because they are drawn according to the scale of the entire aircraft. This makes it difficult to understand the relationships between the components and to know detailed structures.
Conventionally, these problems of the maintenance manual have been coped with by experience and efforts of maintenance engineers.
That is, although it is difficult to read a three-dimensional view drawing of an entire aircraft, maintenance engineers who have actually experienced maintenance works many times manage to understand the relationships between the drawing and the actual aircraft and finally can estimate a work to be performed based on the three-dimensional drawing of the entire aircraft.
As for the respective components (parts), through work experiences, engineers can accumulate a knowledge of functions of the respective components and connections and functional relationships between these components.
On the other hand, the performance and the durability of an aircraft have been significantly improved and the frequency of occurrence of a failure in the aircraft is significantly decreased as compared to an aircraft of the prior art.
This leads to a sharp decrease in the number of times to actually experience maintenance works and it is becoming difficult for young engineers to learn functions and structures of an aircraft on the maintenance site.
This results in that only those engineers having a sufficient experience can actually know the structures and functions of the aircraft, leaving an anxiety for the future maintenance system.
Moreover, even those engineers having a rich experience cannot have a complete knowledge of contents of numerous pages of a parts catalogue including parts ID numbers. Retrieval of a parts catalogue and ID numbers requires a plenty of time regardless of experience. This problem cannot be solved by the efforts and experience of the engineers.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a maintenance manual interface system enabling even young engineers having little experience to easily perform a maintenance work of a machine composed of numerous components and having highly sophisticated functions such as an aircraft and other transportation means as well as to easily retrieve a parts catalogue.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a medium containing a computer program product for the maintenance manual interface system.
The maintenance manual interface system according to the present invention is to be used for retrieving and identifying a paragraph of a maintenance manual to be referenced in response to a maintenance request information. The interface system comprises: a nonvolatile storage unit including: a total management storage block containing an image data of total management drawings, each showing a set of structurally related components which set is specified by the maintenance request information; a partial management storage block containing an image data of partial management drawings corresponding to the respective components of the set; a detailed information storage block containing a detailed information associated with the respective components of the set; and a manual information storage block containing paragraphs of the maintenance manual stored corresponding to the respective components;
a display screen for displaying an information;
a main controller for data processing; and
a man-machine interface having a function for entering a maintenance request information, a detailed information display request, and a maintenance manual display request into the main controller and a function for specifying a position on the display screen.
Moreover, the main controller includes: a total management storage display controller for detecting a maintenance request information entered through the man-machine interface, reading out a total management drawing corresponding to the maintenance request information from the total management storage block, and displaying the total management drawing on the display screen; a partial management storage display controller for detecting a position specification on the currently displayed drawing through the man-machine interface, reading out a partial management drawing corresponding to a component specified by the position specification, from the partial management storage block, and displaying the partial management drawing on the display screen; a detailed information display controller for detecting a detailed information display request from the man-machine interface, reading out a detailed information associated with the currently displayed partial management drawing, from the detailed information storage block, and displaying the detailed information on the display screen; and a manual information display controller for detecting a manual information display request from the man-machine interface, reading out a paragraph of the maintenance manual associated with the currently displayed det
Mizrahi Diane D.
Mofiz Apu
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