Information processing system and information processing device

Abstract

The present disclosure provides an information processing system that shares an alarm handling procedure executed between users and between service personnel. The information processing system according to the present disclosure comprises: a first device installed in a first facility; a terminal provided with an input unit that receives, from a user of the first facility, an input of a first handling method for an alarm generated by the first device; a storage unit that stores, in association with the first handling method, a procedure for dealing with the alarm; a conversion unit that converts the first handling method into a second handling method obtained by subjecting the first handling method to processing; and a display unit that displays the procedure and the second handling method in association with each other when the alarm is generated by the first device (see fig. 1).

Description

Information Processing System and Information Processing Apparatus

[0001] The present disclosure relates to an information processing system and an information processing apparatus.

[0002] In an automatic analyzer that analyzes biochemical and immunological components of blood and urine, an alarm is notified when an abnormality is detected during the operation of the apparatus. The user eliminates the cause of the abnormality according to the coping procedure for the alarm. Patent Document 1 discloses a technique of "sorting the information on coping methods that match the acquired alarm according to a predetermined criterion" (see the summary of Patent Document 1).

[0003] International Publication No. 2023 / 054550

[0004] According to Patent Document 1, regarding the display method of the alarm coping procedure, it only sorts and displays the coping procedures in the order of priority, and does not consider the case where the alarm is not eliminated even if all coping procedures are implemented. Usually, when the alarm is not eliminated even if all coping procedures displayed on the apparatus are implemented, the user requests support from a service person. However, there are also cases where the user can eliminate the alarm within the range that can be handled without the need for a service person. Since such coping information is found in the process of apparatus operation, it is not reflected in the system and often remains shared only within the facility.

[0005] Therefore, the present disclosure provides an information processing system that shares alarm coping procedures implemented among users and service persons.

[0006] In order to solve the above problems, the information processing system of the present disclosure includes a first apparatus installed in a first facility, a terminal including an input unit that receives an input of a first coping method for an alarm generated by the first apparatus from a user of the first facility, a storage unit that stores a procedure for corresponding to the alarm in association with the first coping method, a conversion unit that converts the first coping method into a second coping method obtained by performing processing on the first coping method, and a display unit that displays the procedure and the second coping method in association with each other when the alarm is generated by the first apparatus.

[0007] Further features relating to this disclosure will become apparent from the description herein and the accompanying drawings. Furthermore, aspects of this disclosure are achieved and realized through elements and various combinations of elements and the modes of the claims described herein and the accompanying claims. The descriptions herein are merely illustrative and do not limit in any way the claims or applications of this disclosure.

[0008] According to this disclosure, alarm response procedures implemented by users and service personnel can be shared.

[0009] Other issues, configurations, and effects will be clarified by the following description of the embodiments.

[0010] A schematic diagram showing an example of the configuration of an information processing system. An example of the alarm response information sharing screen. An example of the screen display of the alarm response case tab. An example of the screen display of the report tab. A flowchart showing the alarm response process using the alarm response information sharing screen. A flowchart showing the processing of submitted alarm response procedures.

[0011] [First Embodiment] <Example of Information Processing System Configuration> Figure 1 is a schematic diagram showing an example of the configuration of an information processing system 100. The information processing system 100 comprises a plurality of devices 102 installed in a plurality of facilities 101, a user terminal 109, a service person terminal 110, and a cloud server 105 connected to these via a network. The devices 102 are any devices, such as an automated analyzer or a robot. In this embodiment, the case where the device 102 is an automated analyzer may be described as an example. The number of devices 102 installed in one facility 101 may be one or more.

[0012] The user terminal 109 is operated by the user of the device 102. At least one user terminal 109 is provided for each facility 101, and it is configured to allow the user to access information about the device 102 within their facility 101 via a display 1091. The service person terminal 110 is operated, for example, by a service person who performs maintenance or repairs on the device 102 that cannot be handled by the user. The service person terminal 110 is configured to allow the user to access information about the device 102 within multiple facilities 101 via a display 1101.

[0013] The device 102 includes a processor (not shown), memory, a display, a first storage device 103 for storing alarm information, and a communication device 104. The alarm information includes an alarm code, the name of the alarm generated by the device, the alarm handling procedure, the operating status of the device, and the date and time the alarm occurred. The communication device 104 is connected to the first storage device 103. The communication device 104 is configured to upload the alarm information recorded in the first storage device 103 to a cloud server 105 via the internet.

[0014] The cloud server 105 comprises a database server 106, an application server 107, and a web server 108. The cloud server 105 may also be an on-premise server. The database server 106 has a second storage device 111, a third storage device 112, and a fourth storage device 113. The application server 107 has a control unit 117, a text registration unit 114, a processing procedure evaluation unit 115, and a text conversion unit 116 using a natural language model.

[0015] The second storage device 111 stores alarm information uploaded via the internet from the communication devices 104 of each device 102 in each facility 101.

[0016] The third storage device 112 stores alarm response information, including alarm response procedures performed and submitted by users and service personnel at each facility. Alarm response procedures not stored in the third storage device 112 include user-reported procedures not displayed on device 102, and maintenance details performed by service personnel.

[0017] The fourth storage device 113 stores the processed alarm response information processed by the text conversion unit 116 and the information output from the response procedure evaluation unit 115. The text processed by the text conversion unit 116 is text that has been processed by summarizing, extracting keywords, merging similar report cases, etc., from content posted by users and service personnel. The information output from the response procedure evaluation unit 115 is, for example, a numerical value counted when users at each facility evaluate the alarm response procedure.

[0018] The text registration unit 114 is a software component. The text registration unit 114 processes the process of reflecting (recording) alarm response procedures posted by users and service personnel into the third storage device 112.

[0019] The response procedure evaluation unit 115 is a software component. The response procedure evaluation unit 115 counts the number of evaluations for the target alarm response procedure and performs processing to reflect this in the fourth storage device 113. The evaluation count is a numerical value indicating the reference number of alarm response procedures. In this embodiment, the alarm response procedures and the evaluation for each response procedure are displayed on the screens of the user terminal 109 and the service person terminal 110. Users and service persons can evaluate response procedures by clicking the evaluation button for the response procedures they found useful.

[0020] The text conversion unit 116 is a software component and includes one or more natural language models. Based on the update of the third storage device 112, the text conversion unit 116 performs processing to convert the text posted by users and service persons. Text conversion (processing) includes summarizing the text, extracting keywords from the text, merging the text, etc.

[0021] The control unit 117 is a processing unit for executing each software component and is a control device such as a CPU. The control unit 117 triggers input from the user terminal 109 or the service person terminal 110 to execute the processing of the text registration unit 114, the handling procedure evaluation unit 115, and the text conversion unit 116.

[0022] The web server 108 refers to the second storage device 111 and the fourth storage device 113 and reflects this information in the View of the web page displayed on the user terminal 109 and the service person terminal 110. The web page format can be a general-purpose format such as HTML or CSS, and the web page dynamically transitions when the content of the web server 108 is updated. Alarm information related to an alarm generated in a certain device 102 is uploaded from the communication device 104 to the second storage device 111 of the cloud server 105 via the internet, and is also displayed on the user terminal 109 and the service person terminal 110 by the web server 108.

[0023] The user terminal 109 and the service person terminal 110 are devices capable of viewing web pages, such as PCs or mobile devices. Users can check alarm response procedures performed by users at other facilities and maintenance procedures performed by service persons via the user terminal 109, and service persons can check them via the service person terminal 110. Users can also post alarm response procedures via the user terminal 109, and service persons can post them via the service person terminal 110. Alarm response procedures posted from the user terminal 109 are displayed on the web screen as user-level response procedures, and alarm response procedures posted from the service person terminal 110 are displayed as service person-level response procedures.

[0024] In this embodiment of the information processing system 100, although the diagram shows a configuration in which there are multiple devices 102 and facilities 101, there may be only one of each.

[0025] <Screen Display Example> Figure 2 shows an example of the Alarm Response Information Sharing Screen 201. The Alarm Response Information Sharing Screen 201 is a view of a web page that can be viewed on the user terminal 109 and the service person terminal 110. On this Alarm Response Information Sharing Screen 201, by switching tabs, users can check the alarm status occurring on device 102, check alarm response procedures at other facilities, and post response procedures. From the device selection form 205, users can select the device for which they want to check the alarm response procedure from among multiple devices 102 within the facility 101 to which they belong. From the alarm selection form 206, users can select an alarm occurring on device 102. After selecting the target device from the device selection form 205 and specifying the target alarm from the alarm selection form 206, the alarm details tab 202, alarm response case tab 203, and report tab 204 become visible. The screen changes by switching tabs, so users click on the desired tab to use it.

[0026] The alarm details tab 202 displays the alarm name 207, alarm details 208, and alarm response procedure 209. The alarm name 207 displays the name and alarm code of the alarm. The alarm details 208 displays the cause of the alarm, the location where it occurred, etc. The alarm response procedure 209 displays the procedure for resolving the alarm. In this embodiment, the content displayed in the alarm response procedure 209 is the same as the alarm response procedure displayed on device 102. If there are multiple response procedures, all of them are displayed.

[0027] Figure 3 shows an example of the screen displayed when clicking the Alarm Handling Examples tab 203. Normally, the user resolves the alarm by following the Alarm Handling Procedure 209 described in the Alarm Details tab 202. However, there are cases where the alarm is not resolved even after performing the Alarm Handling Procedure 209. In that case, the user clicks the Alarm Handling Examples tab 203.

[0028] The Alarm Response Cases tab 203 consists of a form 301 that displays user-level response procedures and a form 302 that displays service person-level response procedures. Each form 301 and 302 has an area 304 that displays the username or service person name, an area 303 that displays the alarm response procedure, and a rating button 306. The rating button 306 displays a rating number that indicates how helpful the response procedure was to other users. Alarm response procedures are sorted in descending order of rating number and displayed in forms 301 and 302. In addition to the rating number, it is also possible to implement a function to sort response procedures according to the posting date and time, the number of keywords, etc. Multiple response procedure forms are displayed, and other cases can be viewed by operating the scroll bar.

[0029] Form 301, which displays user-level troubleshooting procedures, shows procedures not listed in Alarm Troubleshooting Procedure 209 on Alarm Details Tab 202. By selecting the target device (for example, a device of the same model) in Device Selection Form 205 and the target alarm in Alarm Selection Form 206, users can refer to the troubleshooting procedures performed by users at other facilities for the selected alarm.

[0030] The area 304 indicating the username displays the username of the user who posted the alarm response procedure and the facility to which that user belongs, as well as the posting date and time.

[0031] Area 305, which displays the alarm handling procedure, shows the steps taken by other users when resolving the alarm. In this area, keywords related to the handling procedure are highlighted. The highlighting process includes marking with bold text and colored text.

[0032] The rating button 306 is a button that allows users to rate how much other users have found the relevant post helpful. Users can rate the procedure by pressing the rating button 306.

[0033] Form 302, which shows the service person-level response procedures, shares the details of alarm responses performed by service personnel. The basic format is the same as that of user response procedures. Form 302, which shows the service person-level response procedures, also has a work procedure link 307. By clicking the work procedure link 307, users can navigate to a page where the service person's work procedure is attached. Service personnel can refer to maintenance procedures previously performed by service personnel at other facilities. This allows less experienced service personnel to refer to maintenance procedures and implementation examples from experienced service personnel, contributing to improved work efficiency and human resource development for service personnel.

[0034] As shown in Figure 3, a form 302 displaying service person-level troubleshooting procedures is also shown on the user terminal 109. This allows the user to learn service person-level troubleshooting procedures, which may be useful when dealing with alarms or performing maintenance.

[0035] Figure 4 shows an example of the screen displayed when the Report tab 204 is clicked. Users or service personnel click the Report tab 204 when they have procedures not listed in the Alarm Response Cases tab 203, or when they want to add information to an existing case. The Report tab 204 has an input form 401 where the user can enter the response procedure, and a submit button 402 to send the entered information to the cloud.

[0036] Users or service personnel can freely enter alarm response procedures in text format into input form 401. However, there may be restrictions on the input content, such as a limit on the number of characters that can be entered or the registration of sensitive words. In addition to text input, input form 401 also allows for file attachments. Service personnel can attach work-related procedure manual files to the input form. The file format should be one that can be viewed on a web page, such as PDF. The file size that can be sent may also be limited to consider server load. After entering the text, users and service personnel submit the content using the submit button 402.

[0037] Furthermore, the alarm details tab 202 shown in Figure 2 may also display troubleshooting steps previously submitted by the user. Since troubleshooting steps submitted by the user are likely to be adopted in the future, displaying them in the alarm details tab 202 allows the user to try those troubleshooting steps at an early stage.

[0038] <Display process related to the alarm response information sharing screen 201> Figure 5 is a flowchart of the alarm response process using the alarm response information sharing screen 201.

[0039] In step S501, the user terminal 109 displays the alarm handling information sharing screen 201 and accepts the user's selection of the target device and alarm. The user selects the device 102 to be visualized from the device selection form 205. Then, the user selects the alarm to be visualized from the alarm selection form 206. As a result, the alarm details tab 202 screen is displayed as the initial screen. Thus, step S501 is a step in which the user performs operations on the screen.

[0040] In step S502, the user checks the alarm information of the device 102 selected in step S501 and performs the alarm response procedure. At this time, the user checks the alarm details 208 and the alarm response procedure 209 and performs maintenance according to the contents of the alarm response procedure 209.

[0041] In step S503, the device 102 determines whether the alarm has been resolved by the maintenance performed in step S502. If the abnormality is resolved by the user's maintenance, the device 102 will, for example, either clear the alarm display or display a screen indicating that the abnormality has been resolved. If the alarm is resolved, the process ends there. The user checks the display on the device 102, and if the alarm has not been resolved, proceeds to step S504.

[0042] In step S504, the user checks the alarm handling case tab 203 and performs maintenance by referring to the handling procedures of users in other facilities. As described above, a form 301 for displaying the handling procedures at the user level is displayed on the alarm handling case tab 203. This is the procedure implemented when the alarm was not cleared even after the user in another facility performed the alarm handling procedure 209. The user attempts to clear the alarm by referring to the procedures of other facilities.

[0043] In step S505, the device 102 determines whether the alarm has been cleared by the maintenance in step S504. Then, the user determines whether the handling procedures implemented in step S504 can be referred to. If the alarm is not cleared even after implementing the procedures posted by the user in another facility in step S504, or if there is no alarm handling case, the process proceeds to step S506. If the alarm is cleared (Yes) by the maintenance in step S504, the process ends as it is. At this time, before the process ends, a step of determining whether the user's post was helpful and clicking the evaluation button 306 may be performed.

[0044] In step S506, the user requests support from the service person. If the alarm is not cleared even after performing all alarm handling in step S504, the user contacts the service person and requests the alarm to be cleared. The service person checks the alarm and performs maintenance on the device 102. At this time, the service person can refer to the form 302 for displaying the handling procedures at the service person level on the alarm handling case tab 203 and the work procedure manual link 307. Thereby, the service person can perform maintenance by referring to the past alarm handling cases of other service persons.

[0045] In step S507, the alarm response information sharing screen 201 accepts input (text) of alarm response procedures from a user or service person. The user or service person submits the alarm response procedure from the report tab 204. This step is a step in which the user or service person performs operations on the screen. Prior to submission, the service person determines whether the alarm response procedure performed was a procedure that could be performed at the user level or an alarm response procedure at the service person level. If the alarm response procedure performed by the service person was a procedure that could be performed at the user level, the user moves from the user terminal 109 to the report tab 204 and submits the response procedure. Instead of the user submitting a user-level response procedure, the service person may submit a user-level response procedure from the service person terminal 110. If it was a service person-level alarm response procedure, the service person moves from the service person terminal 110 to the report tab 204 and submits the response procedure. At this time, the submission is associated with information about the target device and information about the target alarm and is transmitted to the cloud server 105 via the internet. The submitted troubleshooting steps are processed internally by the cloud server 105 before being displayed in the Alarm Troubleshooting Cases tab 203. The internal processing of submissions by the cloud server 105 will be described later.

[0046] <Process for Posting Alarm Handling Procedures> Figure 6 is a flowchart showing the processing of posted alarm handling procedures in the cloud server 105. When the control unit 117 of the AP server 107 receives a post (text) containing alarm handling procedures, along with information about the target device and the target alarm associated with it, from a user terminal 109 or a service person terminal 110, the text registration unit 114 stores it in the third storage device 112 of the database server 106. At this time, the control unit 117 further associates the post stored in the third storage device 112 with the corresponding alarm information (including alarm handling procedures) stored in the second storage device 111, based on the information about the target device and the target alarm. Subsequently, the following processing of the post is performed.

[0047] In step S601, the control unit 117 extracts the text to be processed from the third storage device 112 and inputs it to the text conversion unit 116 including one or more natural language models. Note that, for the processing of the text conversion unit 116 in step S602, step S603, and step S604 described below, only one of the processes may be performed. In the present embodiment, three processes of text summarization (step S602), keyword extraction (step S603), and similarity calculation (step S604) are combined.

[0048] In step S602, the text conversion unit 116 inputs the text extracted in step S601 into the natural language model and generates a summary sentence of the text. The natural language model in the present embodiment can be, for example, a generally publicly available pre-trained large-scale language model such as GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) or BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). Further, the text summarization is an abstract summarization that understands the content of the input text and generates a summary sentence from scratch, and can be processed by a language model incorporating an algorithm such as Self Attention.

[0049] In step S603, the text conversion unit 116 inputs the summarized text output in step S602 into the natural language model again and performs a process of extracting important (frequently occurring) words (keywords) in the sentence. Here, the natural language model to be used may be the same as the model used in step S601 or another natural language model. The natural language model used in this step S603 can be, for example, a model including algorithms such as tokenization including BPE (Byte Pair Encoding), embedding for vectorizing the tokenized words, and Self Attention for extracting the importance of words.

[0050] In step S604, the text conversion unit 116 performs a similarity comparison of the summarized text output in step S602 with past posting examples recorded in the fourth storage device 113. A natural language model is used for the similarity comparison. The natural language model used in step S604 may be the same as the model used in step S601, or it may be a different natural language model. The natural language model used in step S604 may, for example, include an algorithm for vectorizing text by embedding and comparing the cosine similarity of the vectorized texts.

[0051] In step S605, the text conversion unit 116 determines whether the similarity calculated in step S604 is 0.9 (90%) or higher. Using a model that uses cosine similarity comparison as an example, if the similarity is 0.9 or higher, the texts can be considered to have the same content. Therefore, in this case, the determination is branched based on whether the similarity is 0.9 or higher.

[0052] If the similarity obtained by the cosine similarity comparison in step S605 is less than 0.9 (No), the process proceeds to step S606. In step S606, the text conversion unit 116 associates the summary text output in step S602 with the keywords output in step S603 and stores them in the fourth storage device 113.

[0053] In step S607, the Web server 108 confirms the update of the fourth storage device 113 and reflects the updated text on the Web page. Specifically, the Web server 108 extracts the summary text and keywords from the fourth storage device 113, marks the text matching the keywords from the summary text (e.g., by displaying it in bold), and updates the Web page. The marking process can be implemented using various technologies such as HTML tags and CSS property settings.

[0054] If the similarity score in step S605 is 0.9 or higher, the process proceeds to step S608. In step S608, the text conversion unit 116 merges the contents of similar texts into a single text. Since text merging corresponds to abstract summarization, it can be achieved by using a model similar to the natural language model used in step S602.

[0055] In step S609, the countermeasure procedure evaluation unit 115 performs a process to increment the count of evaluations. The posting of alarm countermeasure procedures with similar content corresponds to an increase in the number of reports of similar countermeasure procedures. Therefore, the evaluation count, which approximates the number of reports, is counted. The evaluation count to be counted is the evaluation count held by similar past posts that were merged in step S608. The evaluation count is stored in the fourth storage device 113.

[0056] In step S610, the control unit 117 retrains the natural language model of the text conversion unit 116 using the text information stored in the third storage device 112. The third storage device 112 stores the alarm handling procedures for the device that have been performed and posted by users and service personnel. Therefore, by retraining the natural language model using the third storage device 112 as training data, it is possible to specialize the model for alarm information. Furthermore, the retraining of the model in step S610 is not necessarily performed every time a process is run, and can be performed depending on the amount of text accumulated in the third storage device 112. In addition, the training includes data preprocessing to improve the accuracy of the model. Data preprocessing refers to text cleaning such as deleting special characters and HTML tags. The trained model can be used in steps S602, S603, S604, and S608 when the process in Figure 6 is executed again.

[0057] <Summary of the First Embodiment> As described above, the information processing system 100 of this embodiment comprises: a device 102 installed in facility 101; a user terminal 109 or service person terminal 110 (terminal) equipped with an input unit that receives input of a submission (first response method) of a procedure for dealing with an alarm generated in device 102 from a user or service person of facility 101; a database server (storage unit) that stores the procedure for responding to the alarm in association with the submission; a text conversion unit 116 (conversion unit) that converts the submission into a processed submission after processing; and a display 1091 or 1101 that displays the alarm response procedure and the processed submission in association when an alarm occurs in device 102.

[0058] The information processing system 100, with the configuration described above, can share alarm response procedures between users and service personnel. This expands the scope of issues that users can handle without needing to request assistance from service personnel, leading to reduced downtime and improved work efficiency for both users and service personnel.

[0059] [Variations] This disclosure is not limited to the embodiments described above, but includes various variations. For example, the embodiments described above are described in detail for the purpose of explaining this disclosure, and do not necessarily have to include all the configurations described. Also, parts of one embodiment can be replaced with the configurations of another embodiment. Also, configurations of other embodiments can be added to the configuration of one embodiment. Also, parts of the configuration of each embodiment can be added, deleted, or replaced with parts of the configurations of other embodiments.

[0060] 100 Information Processing System 101 Facility 102 Device 103 First Storage Device 104 Communication Device 105 Cloud Server (Information Processing Device) 106 Database Server (Storage Unit) 107 AP Server 108 Web Server (Display Generation Unit) 109 User Terminal (Terminal) 1091 Display (Display Unit) 110 Service Person Terminal (Terminal) 1101 Display (Display Unit) 111 Second Storage Device (Storage Unit) 112 Third Storage Device (Storage Unit) 113 Fourth Storage Device (Storage Unit) 114 Text Registration Unit 115 Handling Procedure Evaluation Unit 116 Text Conversion Unit (Conversion Unit) 117 Control Unit

Claims

1. An information processing system comprising: a first device installed in a first facility; a terminal equipped with an input unit that receives input from a user of the first facility of a first response method for an alarm generated in the first device; a storage unit that stores a procedure for responding to the alarm in association with the first response method; a conversion unit that converts the first response method into a second response method obtained by modifying the first response method; and a display unit that displays the procedure and the second response method in association when the alarm is generated in the first device.

2. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the processing includes at least one of the following: formatting, summarizing, marking the first countermeasure, and merging the contents with similar countermeasures stored in the memory unit.

3. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the display unit displays the procedure and the second countermeasure in association when the alarm occurs in a second device installed in a second facility different from the first facility.

4. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the conversion unit performs at least one of the following processes on the first processing method using a natural language model: summarizing the first processing method, extracting frequently occurring words, and comparing it with first processing methods received in the past, thereby converting it into a second processing method.

5. The information processing system according to claim 3, wherein the input unit receives input from a user of the second facility regarding an evaluation of whether the second countermeasure is effective, and the display unit displays the second countermeasure and the evaluation in association.

6. The information processing system according to claim 5, wherein the display unit displays the second countermeasures sorted by the number of evaluations of the second countermeasures.

7. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the input unit includes an input form for receiving a first response method to an alarm generated by the first device from a user of the first facility via free text input, and an attachment form for receiving attachments of files related to the first response method.

8. The information processing system according to claim 3, wherein the display unit displays, for the second countermeasure obtained by processing the first countermeasure entered by the user of the first facility, a user ID for identifying that the input was made by the user of the first facility, and the date and time the first countermeasure was entered.

9. The information processing system according to claim 4, wherein the conversion unit performs a process to retrain the natural language model using the data of the first processing method and updates the natural language model used for conversion of the first processing method.

10. An information processing device comprising: a receiving unit that receives a first response method for an alarm generated by a first device installed in a first facility, transmitted from the input unit of a terminal; a storage unit that stores a procedure for responding to the alarm and the first response method in association; a conversion unit that converts the first response method into a second response method obtained by modifying the first response method; and a display generation unit that generates a display for display on the terminal in association with the procedure and the second response method.

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