JP2000196769A - Household electrical appliance maintenance and repair service system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To speedily and appropriately cope with the fault of a household electric appliance whose function is made high. SOLUTION: The user of a household electrical appliance accesses a home page which the WWW server 101 of a maintenance/repair service center 1 opens to WWW3, registers a necessary item and contracts with it for maintenance. When the maintenance contact is realized, a contractor is registered in the customer data base 103 of the maintenance/repair service center. Self-fault diagnosis means incorporated in household electric appliances 203, 204,... in a house 2 monitor the operation states of the household electrical appliances. When a part where a fault occurs exists, it is reported to a unit information management device 201 and the unit information management device receiving it automatically calls the maintenance/repair service center through a telephone network 4 and informs the fault diagnosis device of fault information. When the fault diagnosis device receives fault information, the maintenance/repair service center retrieves a fault diagnosis data base and decides fault corresponding information such as a fault, a repair content required for the cause and exchange components.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a home appliance maintenance and repair system which automatically performs a failure diagnosis necessary for maintenance at a remote maintenance and repair service center when a failure occurs in a household appliance in a general household. Service system.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art At present, a large number of electric appliances such as a television, a telephone, an air conditioner, a fully automatic washing machine and the like are widely used in each home.
When a failure occurs in these electrical products, when a failure report is received from the user, a maintenance service person can be dispatched to the home of the report source to respond to the failure repair, or depending on the type of product, bring in the repair by bringing it in. I have to.

When a maintenance service worker is dispatched to a home where a failure has occurred, the person in charge who has received the repair request or the maintenance service staff who has been instructed to respond to the problem checks the failure status in advance with the requester by telephone, and then roughly makes a call. The cause of the failure is estimated, the repair technique corresponding to the cause and the necessary replacement parts are determined, and the user is sent to the location of the client.

In order to determine the cause of failure, required repair technology, and necessity of replacement parts, a maintenance service person may use a failure diagnosis system.

[0005]

However, in such a conventional failure handling system, even if a failure occurs particularly in a home electric appliance, for example, "the television disappears,""the sound disappears," Only rough failure information such as "washing machine has stopped running" can be obtained, and detailed information such as which circuit part incorporated in the home appliance has failed can not be obtained. It is necessary to arrange replacement parts so as to be able to deal with them, assuming several failure causes and failure locations, and go to the place of the client.To be able to deal with such flexible failures, the maintenance service staff side Requires a wide range of product knowledge and experience, so it takes time for the maintenance service staff to become full, the number of maintenance service staff is not uniform, and as a result, troubleshooting Time-consuming, there is a problem in that the inconvenience to the customer.

[0006] Furthermore, it is expected that even more sophisticated home electric appliances will be developed at present, and more sophisticated and complicated home electric appliances will appear in the future. It is preferable to specialize the repairs to be performed for each maintenance service person if possible, because the burden on the maintenance service person is increased in order to take charge.

The present invention has been made in view of such a conventional technical problem, and has been developed in a remote maintenance and repair service center connected to a large number of homes by WWW and a telephone network.
When a failure occurs in a certain household appliance in a certain household, the failure is diagnosed by identifying the cause, identifying the necessary repair technology, and identifying the required replacement parts. It is an object of the present invention to provide a home appliance maintenance and repair service system that can identify a location and also propose necessary repair techniques to maintenance service personnel.

[0008]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a home appliance maintenance / repair service system in which a maintenance / repair service center and each house are connected by a telephone network and WWW. WW to publish the homepage for maintenance and repair service registration on WWW
A W server, a failure diagnosis device that diagnoses a failure based on the self-diagnosis information sent from each house and presents necessary repair technology information, a customer database that manages customer information, and a failure of the failure diagnosis device. A failure diagnosis database for registering information used for the diagnosis processing, each house having a self-failure diagnosis means incorporated in each home electric appliance, and collecting self-failure diagnosis information of the self-failure diagnosis means; A device information management device for automatically contacting the maintenance service center via a network.

In the maintenance / repair service system according to the first aspect of the present invention, first, a user of a home appliance that wishes to make a maintenance contract for the home appliance is required to use the WWW of the maintenance / repair service center.
The server accesses a home page published on the WWW, registers necessary items and signs a maintenance contract. If this maintenance contract is formalized, the contractor will be registered as a regular contractor in the customer database of the maintenance and repair service center.

The self-diagnosis means incorporated in each home electric appliance in each house monitors the operation state of each part of the home electric appliance, and notifies the device information management device if there is a failure portion. The device automatically calls the maintenance and repair service center via the telephone network and reports the failure information to the failure diagnosis device.

When the failure diagnosis device receives the failure information, the maintenance and repair service center searches the customer database for the failure information and determines whether or not the customer is a customer for whom a regular maintenance contract has been made. If it is registered as a legitimate contractor, it receives the failure information formally and searches the failure diagnosis database to determine the cause of the failure, the required repair contents, and the failure handling information such as replacement parts.

[0012] Then, the personnel of the maintenance and repair service center confirms the address by looking at the customer information, determines the appropriate maintenance service staff to be dispatched by looking at the failure handling information, and responds to the failure. .

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a system configuration according to an embodiment of the present invention. The home electric appliance maintenance and repair service system of the present invention includes a maintenance and repair service center 1, a general home 2, a WWW 3 connecting these, and a telephone network 4.

The maintenance and repair service center 1
A WWW server 101, a failure diagnosis device 102, a customer database 103, a failure diagnosis database 104, and an electric product database 105 are provided.

The general home 2 has a device information management device 20
1. Home LAN 202, and home appliances such as a television 203, an air conditioner 204, and an illuminator 205 connected to the LAN 202 to be managed are provided.

As shown in FIG. 2, each of the home electric appliances to be managed, such as the television 203, the air conditioner 204, the illuminator 205, etc.
0, a failure diagnosis circuit 21 for monitoring the operation state of each of the small circuits 1 to n constituting the circuit 20, a transmission / reception circuit 22 for transmitting failure diagnosis information of the failure diagnosis circuit 21 to the device information management device 201 via the LAN 202. Is incorporated.

The failure diagnosis circuit 21 is composed of
The measured value at each of the n diagnostic points is compared with a reference value.
The information is added and transmitted to the transmission / reception circuit 22.

The transmission / reception circuit 22 adds device-specific information (manufacturer name, model, date of manufacture) to the data from the failure diagnosis circuit 21, and according to a certain transmission format, L
The message is transmitted to the device information management device 201 by the AN 202.
This transmission is performed at regular intervals and when an abnormality is detected.

The WWW server 101 of the maintenance and repair service center 1 publishes a homepage relating to the maintenance and repair service information on the WWW 3 and allows a customer who applies for a maintenance and repair contract to access the necessary information in accordance with the application form prepared on the homepage. By having them write, they will sign the contract. Then, the contract content is registered in the customer database 103. Therefore,
The customer database 103 includes information on the customer who has signed the maintenance and repair service contract, name, zip code, address, telephone number, registration date, information on the electrical equipment to be contracted, as well as the payment method and payment account number of the cost. Is registered.

The failure diagnosis database 104 has registered therein information necessary for failure diagnosis of various types of electric products, for example, expert knowledge information on failure diagnosis.

The electric product database 105 has registered therein a model, a model, a manufacturing period, operating characteristic data of each part, and replacement part information of each of other kinds of electric products.

As shown in FIG. 3, the failure diagnosis device 102 on the maintenance and repair service center 1 side displays the failure diagnosis device screen 10.
6, a registered customer list 107 can be displayed. The customer information displayed in the registered customer list 107 is registered in the customer database 103, and the name, zip code, address, and telephone number of each customer (the device information management device 201 on the customer side is transmitted through the telephone network 4). The telephone number used to transmit information to the center 1) and the registration date are included.

Further, as shown in FIG.
2 can also display the individual customer information 108 on the failure diagnosis device screen 106. The individual customer information 108 includes
Along with the customer information listed in the registered customer list 107, status and data indicating the normal / abnormal operation status of each of the registered electrical products together with the model and model of the electrical product registered as a maintenance and repair target for each customer. Including. In FIG. 4, an electrical product in which a circle is written in the status column indicates that an abnormality has occurred.

Further, as shown in FIG.
02 indicates the failure diagnosis information 1 on the failure diagnosis device screen 106.
09 can be displayed. This failure diagnosis information 109
Contains information on electrical products (including model name, manufacturer, model, date of manufacture), as well as measured values, reference values, and status data for each measurement point of this circuit, and displays them in a list format. . Also in this case, a measurement point with a circle written in the status column indicates that the measurement value is abnormal.

Each measurement point of the failure diagnosis information 109 is linked with its time-series measurement value data. By placing a cursor on the measurement point portion and clicking with a mouse or other pointing device, it is shown in FIG. Thus, the time series graph of the measurement points can be expanded and displayed.

Next, the operation of the maintenance and repair service system having the above configuration will be described.

<General Household> For an electric appliance in the home that is going to receive a failure repair service, a LAN
202 connects to the device information management device 201.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 2, in addition to the main circuit 20 for performing the original function of the electric product, various diagnostic points 1 to n therein are connected to the electric product connected to the LAN 202 in advance. Comparing the measured value with the reference value, if it is within a normal range, only the measured value, and if it is outside the normal range, adds a failure occurrence information (NG information) together with the measured value. A transmission / reception circuit 22 for transmitting the failure diagnosis information generated by the circuit 21 to the device information management device 201 through the LAN 202 is built in or added afterwards.

The failure diagnostic circuit 21 of each of the electric appliances 203, 204, 205,... Compares the measured values of the diagnostic points 1 to n in the circuit 20 with a reference value. Only, and if it is outside the normal range, the abnormality occurrence information (NG information) is added together with the measured value and passed to the transmission / reception circuit 22.

The transmission / reception circuit 22 adds the information unique to the electric product, the maker name, the product name, the model, and the date of manufacture to the failure diagnosis information from the failure diagnosis circuit 21, and according to a certain transmission format, transmits the device information through the LAN 202. Management device 20
Send to 1. This transmission is performed at regular intervals and when failure diagnosis information to which NG information is added is received.

The device information management device 201 is provided for each electric product 2
Receive the fault diagnosis information sent from LANs 03, 204, 205,... Via the LAN 202, store the fault diagnosis information for a certain time range, and overwrite with new information every time the time elapses.

When the failure diagnosis information including the NG information is received, the failure diagnosis information of all the electric products is collected, and the maintenance and repair service center 1 is automatically dialed immediately. Then, the customer information of the contractor, that is, the name, the postal code, the address, and the telephone number are added to the failure diagnosis information and transmitted. In this case, a configuration in which only an ID number is transmitted for identification of a customer may be employed. In that case, the center 1 searches the customer database 103 to determine customer information.

The equipment information management apparatus 201 also automatically transmits the latest failure diagnosis data for all electrical products to the maintenance and repair service center 1 periodically, for example, every month, even when no failure occurs.

<Maintenance / Repair Service Center> In the maintenance / repair service center, a WWW server 101 publishes a homepage for advertising a failure diagnosis service to a customer on WWW3, and a customer who wants to receive the failure diagnosis service in the homepage. And register customer information. When the maintenance and repair contract is registered, an ID number is issued and a password is set. The customer registration information includes a name, a postal code, an address, and a telephone number (telephone number of a telephone using the service). In addition, the information, the model, the model, and the date of manufacture of the electric appliance to be subjected to the maintenance service are also registered.

When the registration procedure of the customer information is completed, the registration information is sent to the failure diagnosis device 102 and registered in the customer database 103.

Further, when the customer information is registered, diagnostic information of the customer's electric product is posted on the homepage of the WWW server 101, and the customer himself / herself can view the registered contents on the homepage by inputting the ID number and the password. become.

Application software for failure diagnosis is registered in the failure diagnosis device 102, and the failure diagnosis is executed by searching a database.

The database includes a customer database 103 for registering customer information and a failure diagnosis database 104 for storing diagnosis information of electric products transmitted from the customer.
And an electrical product database 105 that stores pass / fail reference values for each product type of each electrical product maker and a list of replacement parts.

The fault diagnosis device 102 performs the following processing. When a call is received from a customer, it is determined whether the phone number belongs to a registered customer. If the phone number is not registered, the call is rejected. Then, it receives the failure diagnosis information of the electric product that is sent.

If the received fault diagnosis information includes information indicating fault occurrence (NG information), the NG
Receive all the diagnostic data of the appliance containing the information,
The data is stored in the failure diagnosis database 104, and the customer information 108 as shown in FIG.

If the NG information is not included, only the relevant data in the failure diagnosis database 104 is updated. If it is found that the new product is included in the electrical product name, it is additionally created in the failure diagnosis database 104.

When NG information is included in the received failure diagnosis information, the customer information 10 as shown in FIG.
8 is displayed on the screen 106. In response to this, the center personnel specifies the electrical product with the NG mark in the status column and gives a more detailed failure diagnosis execution instruction (corresponding to the pointing device). By clicking on the electrical product column), a more detailed failure diagnosis is executed.

In this detailed failure diagnosis, the electric product database 105 is searched to read out the reference value of each measurement point of the corresponding electric product, and all the diagnostic data stored in the failure diagnosis database 104 is searched to perform each measurement. The measurement value of the point is read, and the measurement point indicating the abnormal value is specified. The result of the detailed failure diagnosis is the failure diagnosis information 10 as shown in FIG.
9 is displayed on the screen 106, and an NG mark is attached to the status column for the measurement point indicating an abnormal value.

When further detailed information is required for failure diagnosis, the center staff designates a measurement point marked with NG and gives a display instruction of time-series data (here, too).
By clicking the corresponding measurement point with the pointing device), a time-series graph 110 of the measurement values at the failure occurrence point is displayed as shown in FIG.

If the failure point is determined by the failure diagnosis in this way, the cause of the failure, the repair method,
Information on necessary replacement parts and the like is stored in the failure diagnosis database 10.
4. Use the information in the electrical product database 105 to extract the information. For this, an expert system for failure diagnosis is used.

Thus, in the maintenance and repair service system according to the present embodiment, a large number of homes 2, WWW 3 and telephone network 4
In the remote maintenance and repair service center 1, when a failure occurs in a certain home electric appliance in a certain home, the cause of the failure, the necessary repair method, and the required replacement parts are specified. Such trouble diagnosis can be performed, the location of the customer in which the trouble has occurred can be specified, and the necessary repair technique can be proposed to the maintenance service person, so that the trouble can be dealt with promptly and appropriately.

[0047]

As described above, according to the first aspect of the present invention,
When a failure occurs in a certain household electrical appliance in a certain household, maintenance can be performed without having to ask a non-specialized user to estimate the symptoms of the failure when accepting a repair request as in the past. The repair service center detects the occurrence of a failure and performs a failure diagnosis, such as identifying the cause of the failure, necessary repair methods, and identifying required replacement parts, and identifies the customer's location where the failure occurred. At the same time, necessary repair techniques can be proposed to the maintenance service person, and prompt and appropriate troubleshooting can be performed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a system configuration according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing internal functions of the home electric appliance in the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a registered customer list screen of the failure diagnosis device in the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing a customer information screen of the failure diagnosis device according to the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a failure diagnosis information screen of the failure diagnosis device according to the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a time-series graph screen of measured values of a failure occurrence point developed from the failure diagnosis information screen.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 1 maintenance and repair service center 2 general home 3 WWW 4 telephone network 20 main circuit 21 failure diagnosis circuit 22 transmission / reception circuit 101 WWW server 102 failure diagnosis device 103 customer database 104 failure diagnosis database 105 electric product database 201 device information management device 202 LAN 203 television 204 Air conditioner 205 Illuminator

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A home appliance maintenance / repair service system comprising a maintenance / repair service center and each house connected by a telephone network and WWW, wherein the maintenance / repair service center stores a homepage for maintenance / repair service registration on the WWW. A WWW server to be disclosed, a failure diagnosis device that diagnoses a failure based on the self-diagnosis information sent from each house and presents necessary repair technology information, a customer database that manages customer information, and the failure diagnosis device Each home has a self-diagnosis means incorporated in each home appliance, and the self-diagnosis information of the self-diagnosis means is collected, and each house is provided with a self-diagnosis information. A device information management device for automatically contacting the maintenance service center through the telephone network at times. Consumer electronics product maintenance repair service system that.