Soft Computing for diagnostics in equipment service

We present methods and tools from the Soft Computing domain, which is used within the diagnostics and prognostics framework to accommodate imprecision of real systems. Soft Computing (SC) is an association of computing methodologies that includes as its principal members fuzzy, neural, evolutionary, and probabilistic computing. These methodologies enable us to deal with imprecise, uncertain data and incomplete domain knowledge typically encountered in real-world applications. We outline the advantages and disadvantages of these methodologies and show how they can be combined to create synergistic hybrid SC systems. We conclude the paper with a description of successful SC case study applications to equipment diagnostics.