Failure Mode and Effect Analysis for Abductive Diagnosis

Diagnosis, i.e., fault localization in case of observing an unexpected behavior, is an important practical problem. During the past decades researchers have suggested several approaches for using models of the systems directly for identifying the root causes of failure. This model-based diagnosis approaches are either based on retaining consistency or on abduction. Despite their advantages both approaches are only rarely used in practical applications. In this paper, we focus on bringing abductive diagnosis closer to its application. In particular, we describe how failure mode and effect analysis, a technique of growing interest in applications, can be directly mapped to abductive diagnosis models. We discuss the basic foundations, and also problems that occur and how to deal with them. A direct conversion of FMEAs to abductive diagnosis problems would increase the use of abduction in practice because of avoiding writing logical theories directly.