Patent ID: 6925367

Claim:
A control method for automatically preprocessing a malfunction of a device, comprising the steps of: allocating first terminal equipment to a device susceptible to malfunctions and, upon an occurrence of a malfunction in said device, communicating first data about said malfunction from said first terminal equipment to an automatic central control device located remote from said device; providing access from said central control device to stored second data and at said control device, dependent on said first data and said second data, automatically selecting a group of second terminal equipment using predefined selection rules, said second terminal equipment being respectively allocated to a plurality of service technicians; communicating data, as communicated data, selected from the group consisting of at least a portion of said first data and at least a portion of said second data, together with a malfunction incident signal from said central control device to said group of second terminal equipment; at each second terminal equipment in said group, emitting said malfunction incident signal and said communicated data and electronically acquiring data, as acquired data, selected from the group consisting of preliminary diagnosis data relating to said malfunction and availability data for the service technician allocated to the second terminal equipment; communicating the acquired data from each second terminal equipment to said central control device; at said central control device, evaluating said communicated data and said acquired data according to predefined evaluation rules, thereby obtaining an evaluation result; selecting one of said second terminal equipment, as selected equipment, in said group dependent on said evaluation result; and in said central control device, generating an assignment signal, and communicating said assignment signal from said central control device to said selected equipment, and emitting said assignment signal at said selected equipment.