Patent ID: 7246265

Claim:
A method for automated processing of fault hypotheses in a course of a fault cause analysis in a case of a fault event in a technical installation, which comprises the steps of: providing a data processing system which uses knowledge-based models for the fault cause analysis and physical models of installation functions and processes carried out by the technical installation, the data processing system having a first processor for calculating and storing installation and process states and the first means having access to the physical models and to data relating to the technical installation stored in a data server, the data processing system further having a second processor for hypothesis processing and an input/output device; upon occurrence of a fault, determining, by a user of the data processing system, an existence of a fault hypothesis; accessing, through the second processor for hypothesis processing, results of a calculation of the installation and process states and accessing a checklist of the knowledge-based models for automatically verifying the fault hypothesis determined to exist by the user in the determining step on a basis of conditions associated with checklist items in the checklist; entering a verification result for each checklist item in a result list; and outputting the result list.