The Decision Support System in the Domain of Casting Defects Diagnosis

This article presents a computer system for the identification of casting defects using the methodology of Case-Based Reasoning. The system is a decision support tool in the diagnosis of defects in castings and is designed for small and medium-sized plants, where it is not possible to take advantage of multi-criteria data. Without access to complete process data, the diagnosis of casting defects requires the use of methods which process the information based on the experience and observations of a technologist responsible for the inspection of ready castings. The problem, known and studied for a long time, was decided to be solved with a computer system using a CBR (Case-Based Reasoning) methodology. The CBR methodology not only allows using expert knowledge accumulated in the implementation phase, but also provides the system with an opportunity to "learn" by collecting new cases solved earlier by this system. The authors present a solution to the system of inference based on the accumulated cases, in which the main principle of operation is searching for similarities between the cases observed and cases stored in the knowledge base.