Computer-aided maintenance (not to be confused with CAM which usually stands for

Computer Aided Manufacturing Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) also known as computer-aided modeling or computer-aided machining is the use of software to control machine tools in the manufacturing of work pieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most ...

) refers to systems that utilize

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

to organize planning, scheduling, and support of maintenance and repair. A common application of such systems is the maintenance of computers, either hardware or software, themselves. It can also apply to the maintenance of other complex systems that require periodic maintenance, such as reminding operators that preventive maintenance is due or even predicting when such maintenance should be performed based on recorded past experience.

Computer aided configuration

The first computer-aided maintenance software came from DEC in the 1980s to configure

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...

computers. The software was built using the techniques of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

expert system In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if� ...

s, because the problem of configuring a VAX required expert knowledge. During the research, the software was called ''R1'' and was renamed '' XCON'' when placed in service. Fundamentally, ''XCON'' was a rule-based ''configuration

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

'' written as an expert system using

forward chaining Forward chaining (or forward reasoning) is one of the two main methods of reasoning when using an inference engine and can be described logically as repeated application of ''modus ponens''. Forward chaining is a popular implementation strategy fo ...

rules. As one of the first expert systems to be pressed into commercial service it created high expectations, which did not materialize, as DEC lost commercial pre-eminence. Virginia E. Barker and Dennis E. O'Connor. Expert systems for configuration at Digital: XCON and beyond. Communications of the ACM, 32(3):298--318, March 1989.

Help Desk software

Help desk A help desk is a department or person that provides assistance and information usually for electronic or computer problems. In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University studied the value of an organization's help desk ...

s frequently use help desk

that captures

symptom Signs and symptoms are the observed or detectable signs, and experienced symptoms of an illness, injury, or condition. A sign for example may be a higher or lower temperature than normal, raised or lowered blood pressure or an abnormality showin ...

s of a bug and relates them to fixes, in a ''fix database''. One of the problems with this approach is that the understanding of the problem is embodied in a non-human way, so that solutions are not unified.

Strategies for finding fixes

#The ''bubble-up'' strategy simply records pairs of symptoms and fixes. The most frequent set of pairs is then presented as a tentative solution, which is then attempted. If the fix works, that fact is further recorded, along with the configuration of the presenting system, into a ''solutions database''. #Oddly enough, shutting down and

booting In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so som ...

up again manages to 'fix,' or at least 'mask,' a bug in many computer-based systems; thus ''reboot'' is the remedy for distressingly many symptoms in a 'fix database.' The reason a reboot often works is that it causes the

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

to be flushed. However, typically the same set of actions are likely to create the same result demonstrating a need to refine the "startup" applications (which launch into memory) or install the latest fix/patch of the offending application. #Currently, most expertise in finding fixes lies in human domain experts, who simply sit at a replica of the computer-based system, and who then 'talk through' the problem with the client to duplicate the problem, and then relate the fix.

References

Help desk Product lifecycle management Computer systems