Développement d’un système informatisé d’aide à l’analyse d’avaries : le logiciel Tirex

In designing industrial product, an important and undervalued information is the feedback from failure situations. The present paper describes a simple method to store and retrieve failure analysis cases, allowing to compare a new case with already investigated ones. This method relies on a hierarchical storage of information, and on the definition of a “distance” between two cases. Examples taken from nuclar power plants allow to illustrate the purpose and to develop an evolutive software implementing these ideas. Possible applications and limitations of such systems are outlined.