Modelling Industrial Technical Compromises in Production Systems with Causal Loop Diagrams

Automated production systems (aPS) have long life time, which requires significant maintenance cost. During commissioning phase of aPS, which often occurs at customer sites, the on-site engineers are always under high pressure, because the customers would like to start the production at the earliest. There, some compromises, so-called technical debt (TD), might be chosen. A technical compromise taken in commissioning phase can provide a short-term benefit, but could yield a long-term negative impact to maintenance phase. This study aims to apply Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) to model technical compromises in the aPS domain. A concept namely CLD+TD is proposed. Application examples of CLD+TD on some technical compromises collected from an industrial company working in the automation are reported. A loop dominance analysis on a CLD+TD model is performed, in order to derive circular trend of a technical compromise overtime, thus, relevant maintenance activities could be planned accordingly. In addition, challenges leading to the technical compromises addressed in the presented use cases can support practitioners to develop appropriate solutions, in order to manage the reported technical compromises in commissioning phase.     «

Automated production systems (aPS) have long life time, which requires significant maintenance cost. During commissioning phase of aPS, which often occurs at customer sites, the on-site engineers are always under high pressure, because the customers would like to start the production at the earliest. There, some compromises, so-called technical debt (TD), might be chosen. A technical compromise taken in commissioning phase can provide a short-term benefit, but could yield a long-term negative im...     »