A Study of Service Center Records Using Data Mining
Author(s)
Loh, Han Tong
Koh, Wee Leong
Menon, Rakesh
Leong, Christopher K.
Date Issued
January 2002
Series/Report no.
Innovation in Manufacturing Systems and Technology (IMST);
Abstract
In many manufacturing companies, large databases containing data on failures and repairs of products are maintained. This paper reports on a case where information from such a database is extracted. Such information extracted could be useful for identifying opportunities for reliability improvements in the products. The database was obtained from a manufacturer of inkjet printers and contains both fixed-format and free-form text fields. At present, techniques developed in data mining and information retrieval are mainly designed to handle either fixed-format or free-form text fields, but not a combination of both. The approach taken in this paper is to first transform the free-form text fields into a number of fixed-format fields through analysis of the frequency of key words. Association analysis was then carried out on the resulting fixed-format fields. Results obtained from the analysis produced a number of associations that could contribute to improving product reliability.
Subjects
failures
reliability improvements
data mining
service center records
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