Reverse Failure Analysis for Vehicle Diagnostic Correlation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing diagnostic systems primarily focus on identifying the cause of a symptom, failing to correlate all possible symptoms with the corresponding failure mode or vehicle component, which limits their effectiveness in comprehensive diagnostic procedures.
Innovation Solution
A reverse failure analysis method and apparatus that selects diagnostic tests, associates symptoms with components, and cross-references components to identify all known or possible symptoms and failure modes, enabling comprehensive correlation of symptoms with components and failure modes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If diagnostic test procedures focus on identifying the cause of a symptom, then the diagnostic process can be simplified and performed by inexperienced operators, but the system fails to correlate all possible symptoms with the corresponding failure mode or component
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional diagnostic approach by performing reverse failure analysis: instead of starting with a symptom and finding its cause, the system starts with a failure mode or component and identifies all possible symptoms that could result from it. This inversion allows the system to build comprehensive symptom-component correlations while maintaining ease of operation through automated analysis of existing diagnostic test procedures
2Loss of information
If comprehensive diagnostic procedures are implemented to correlate all possible symptoms with failure modes, then complete diagnostic information is achieved, but the complexity of diagnostic procedures increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service by automatically analyzing existing diagnostic test procedures to generate comprehensive symptom-component correlations. The reverse failure analysis is performed autonomously by the system without requiring manual creation of comprehensive diagnostic procedures, thus achieving complete symptom correlation while avoiding the complexity of manual procedure development
3Loss of information
If reverse failure analysis is performed to identify all possible symptoms of a failure mode, then complete symptom-component correlation is achieved, but additional processing time and computational resources are required
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by conducting reverse failure analysis on existing diagnostic test procedures during system setup or maintenance periods. This preliminary analysis pre-computes comprehensive symptom-component correlations that can be stored and quickly retrieved during actual diagnostic operations, thus achieving complete failure mode analysis without time loss during critical diagnostic situations
Data Source
AI summary
A reverse failure analyzer determines a group of diagnostic test procedures related to a particular vehicle component from a pool of diagnostic procedures, and then identifies the specific failure modes of each of the diagnostic test procedures. The reverse failure analyzer further associates the specific failure modes with the respective vehicle component associated with each of the diagnostic test procedures, and the symptoms associated with each of the diagnostic test procedures to the correlated vehicle components and failure modes. In addition, the reverse failure analyzer can cross-reference various vehicle components that can be the root cause of a particular symptom or a vehicle operational problem. Furthermore, the reverse failure analyzer can receive observed symptoms regarding a particular test subject vehicle and correlate the observed symptoms to the vehicle components that can cause the symptoms based on the results of reverse failure analyses.