Generally, in a plant, various equipment are arranged including electric equipment and monitor control equipment. In devices including such equipment, many require long-term stable operation. It is thus useful to prevent operational stoppages caused by failure of the equipment.
To prevent such stoppages due to equipment failure, it is possible to record a failure history of a device, and preventive maintenance can be performed as necessary based on the tendency of a failure to occur.
As a product and related information management method, Japanese Patent Disclosure (kokai) No. 2003-308363 discloses a method in which a guarantee on a product or data relating to the product, such as management information of a recycle cost, can be easily read.
Namely, a product includes a memory unit for readably storing data relating to the product. The data relating to the product includes product name and/or the manufacture's serial number, and the term of guarantee on the product corresponding to the product name and/or the manufacture's serial number.
In the related information managing method, the information relating to the product is managed by means of a computer, an identifier for identifying each of the products is readably stored in a memory unit in the product, the identifier is read, and information relating to the corresponding product is searched with this identifier as a search key and displayed.
In Japanese Patent Disclosure (kokai) No. 2003-308363, an identifier for identifying each of the products is readably stored in a memory unit of the product, the identifier is read, and information relating to the corresponding product is searched with this identifier as a search key and displayed.
Therefore, in Japanese Patent Disclosure (kokai) No. 2003-308363, failure history data of the shipped product is not managed.
Particularly, in a large-scale plant, intricately and highly developed devices are arranged. It would be useful for an equipment manager to manage failure history data of these devices, perform preventive maintenance as necessary based on a tendency of failures to occur, and prevent the stoppage of the equipment due to the failure ahead of time.