JPH08314761A - Fault informing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To shorten the time to arrange a maintenance engineer by storing the names of maintenance engineers in a storage table sequentially in advance and calling the next maintenance engineer when no response is received from a first engineer. CONSTITUTION: A monitoring target information processing system 1 consists of an abnormality detector 1a, communication control equipment 1b and abnormal state data memory 1c. A fault monitoring device 2 is equipped with a monitor control means 3, an abnormality code/maintenance code table 4, a maintenance engineer information table 5, a fault communication device 6 and a time monitoring device 7. The monitor control means 3 consists of an MPU 3a and memory 3b, and a fault content judging program 8a, an appropriate maintenance engineer selection program 8b and a call response managing program 8c are provided in the memory 3b. The fault communication device 6 issues a call by a pocket beeper via a public line network 9, and sends out a message. In this system, the confirmation information of the maintenance engineer, call information and the presence/absence of resoponse are enabled to cope with each other, and communication with the next maintenance engineer or communication to disuse a countermeasure, etc., is performed depending on the presence/absence of repsonse from the maintenance engineer.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a fault notification system, and more specifically, in an information processing system such as a computer, in order to direct an appropriate maintenance person to a fault target device in the shortest possible time when a fault occurs. Of the fault notification system of.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As represented by a computer-based information processing system, this type of information processing system is often operated and used at all times, day or night. When a failure occurs in this type of device, it is necessary to restore it as soon as possible. Various failure notification systems have been proposed as systems for that purpose. For example, failure information is displayed on a console or a terminal device (hereinafter, referred to as a terminal) that controls the system, and a message that conveys an abnormality to the operator is sent by voice or the like. However, depending on the content of the message, it is impossible to take an early action unless there is a maintenance staff or human resources who can maintain it. Moreover, obstacles occur at unexpected times. Therefore, although it has been conventionally practiced to have the maintenance staff always on standby, it is not uncommon for a specialized maintenance company to request and provide support because of problems such as expenses and working environment.

As shown in the prior art of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 233954/1989, there is a problem that it takes too much time and effort in the form of contacting a maintenance company and calling a maintenance person by a monitoring staff of the maintenance company. In view of this, the invention disclosed in this publication proposes a method of directly contacting a maintenance person in the form of a pager when a failure occurs and contacting a maintenance company when the failure occurs. Further, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-250223, by taking a step further than the above case, a message (contents of failure) is displayed on the display portion of the pager formed by the maintenance personnel, thereby performing a quicker recovery. Proposals have been made.

[0004]

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION Problems to be Solved by the Invention
In the inventions disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 3-233954 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1-233954, no consideration is given to the case where the maintenance personnel cannot respond. In other words, if the maintenance person does not carry the pager, or if he or she does not get in touch with the pager, he or she waits for some time and
It will take time to recover because you will need to contact the maintenance company. When contacting other maintenance personnel when the contact cannot be made in this way, there is a problem that a plurality of maintenance personnel are assigned to the faulty device. Moreover, there are various kinds of faults in the information processing system, such as power supply relation, control relation, mechanism relation, electronic circuit relation, interface / line relation and the like. As mentioned above, not all the maintenance personnel called by pagers are familiar with all of these. When the called maintenance staff cannot perform proper maintenance, another maintenance staff is needed and the recovery is further delayed. An object of the present invention is to solve the above problems of the prior art, and to provide a fault notification system capable of promptly directing appropriate maintenance personnel to the fault generating device or the fault generating system. is there.

[0005]

The features of the fault notifying system of the present invention for achieving such an object are the identification information of maintenance personnel, telephone call information for this maintenance personnel, and the presence or absence of a response from the maintenance personnel. And a storage table sequentially stored for a plurality of maintenance personnel in association with each other, time monitoring means for monitoring a predetermined time for a response of the maintenance personnel called by telephone, and maintenance with reference to the storage table. Calling means for making a call to one of the staff members by a telephone line according to the calling information, operating the time monitoring means, and contacting the next maintenance staff member on the storage table when there is no response from the maintenance staff member within the monitoring time. When there is a response from one of the called maintenance personnel, refer to the response table in the storage table to see if there is a response. Respond to unwanted contact, it is those for the maintenance personnel when there is no response chromatic and a response management unit which storage of there in response to the storage position of the presence or absence of a response of the.

[0006]

As described above, if the maintenance personnel are sequentially stored in the storage table in advance and the next maintenance personnel is called when there is no response, the time required for the maintenance personnel to arrange for the faulty system can be shortened. It Moreover, when there is a response from the maintenance staff who cannot be contacted, it is possible to automatically make a contact to deal with the situation, so that the maintenance staff does not go to one failure target in duplicate. Furthermore, if the maintenance personnel stored in the above-mentioned storage table are managed according to the maintenance content and maintenance level in accordance with the failure content,
An appropriate maintenance person can be appropriately selected to arrange a maintenance person for the faulty system, and the recovery time can be shortened. Moreover, if the contents of the failure are displayed as a message, a maintenance person who can maintain according to the contents of the message can respond in response to the message.

[0007]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment to which the fault notification system of the present invention is applied, FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of an abnormal state memory, and FIG. 3 is a flowchart of a process for generating a fault content code. 4, FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the maintenance staff information table, and FIG. 5 is a flowchart of the failure notification processing.

An information processing system 1 to be monitored is an abnormal state data memory 1c for recording an abnormal state of the abnormality detecting device 1a, the communication control device 1b, and the system or devices connected thereto. It has and. The abnormality detection device 1a uses internal circuits in the abnormal state data memory 1c through periodic interrupt processing.
It detects the abnormal state of the device and external devices connected to this system, and, for example, when the main power supply goes down due to a power failure, etc. The wear-like fault is accepted and stored in a flag at the corresponding position in the abnormal state data memory 1c. Communication control device 1b
Sends failure occurrence information and its contents to the failure monitoring device 2 via a connection line 10 such as a telephone line or a LAN connection line.

As shown in FIG. 2, the abnormal state data memory 1c stores the contents (mainframe 1, mainframe 2, server, printer, ...) In code corresponding to each device to be monitored and internal circuit. Each monitoring target column 1
1 and a status column 12 indicating whether or not each monitoring target is abnormal, and then an abnormality content column 13 are provided. In the status column 12, a flag indicating abnormality or normal (normal = “0”) is provided. , Abnormality = "1") is set. The abnormality "1" is set in the status column 12 when the flag "1" is set in any column of the abnormality content column 13. Abnormality content column 13
Manages by arranging the abnormality detection sensor by dividing the inside of the device or system into areas according to power supply relation, control relation, mechanism relation, electronic circuit relation, interface / line relation and the like. Each of the subdivided monitoring areas such as the inside of the system and the connection device according to this arrangement is defined as area 1, area 2, area 3, area 4, area 5, ... The monitoring area is managed. Then, when an abnormality detection signal is generated from the sensor arranged in each area, the abnormality detection device 1a sets the flag "1" in the corresponding area and sets the flag "1" in the status column 12. Note that, here, as indicated by hatching, some areas are not allocated to the server and the printer. Area 1 is assigned to a monitoring area such as a power source.

The abnormality detection device 1a executes the program for abnormality detection and content determination processing of FIG. 3 by the periodic interrupt processing to acquire the data in the status column 12 of the abnormal status data memory 1c (step 100), and sets the flag. It is determined by referring to whether or not there is an abnormality (step 101). When the flag "1" is not generated, it is determined that there is no abnormality and the operation ends, and the operation is stopped until the next interrupt period. Separately from this, when there is a failure of the hard wafer described above, the abnormality detection device 1a accepts an emergency abnormality occurrence interrupt, sets a flag in the corresponding area of the abnormal state data memory 1c, and proceeds to the next step 102. On the other hand, as a result of the determination in step 101, if there is an abnormality or if there is an emergency abnormality occurrence interrupt, the abnormality content column 13 is referred to next to generate a code according to the content of the abnormality (step 102), and then the failure occurs. Processing for reporting to the monitoring device 2 is started (step 103). In the notification process, transmission data of a fault content including the abnormal code and having the destination (= fault monitoring device 2) and the abnormal code inserted at the head portion is created and sent to the communication control device 1b. The communication control device 1b converts the transmission data into a telegram format and transmits it to the fault monitoring device 2 through the telephone line 10.

As shown in FIG. 1, the fault monitoring device 2 includes a monitoring control means 3, an abnormality code / maintenance code table 4,
It is provided with a maintenance staff information table 5, a failure communication device 6, and a time monitoring device 7 (a so-called watchdog timer). The monitoring control means 3 comprises an MPU 3a and a memory 3b, and the memory 3b has a failure content determination program 8a.
And an appropriate maintenance staff selection program 8b and a call response management program 8c. When the fault monitoring device 2 receives the message from the communication control device 1b, the fault monitoring device 2 receives the MPU3.
The failure content judgment program 8a is executed by a, and the maintenance code is generated by referring to the abnormal code / maintenance code table 4 in accordance with the abnormal code at the beginning. The maintenance code is
It corresponds to a horizontal column to be described later of the maintenance personnel information table 5 shown in FIG. 4, and is distinguished by a fault of a professional level or a fault of a level that can be handled by any maintenance personnel. For a professional level fault, for example, it is divided into four stages, such as power supply / control relation, mechanical relation, entire device, etc. It is divided into two stages: maintenance beginner level and operation management level.
It should be noted that here, at the maintenance beginner level, the contents of the failure are clear and can be dealt with by replacing the board and parts, and the contents that can be maintained by a person who received standard education as a maintenance staff At the operation management level, for example, paper replenishment that becomes a problem in the case of an unmanned driving system,
It covers the contents of operation management such as toner replenishment, ink replacement, battery replacement, and level adjustment. The fault monitoring device 2 uses the MPU 3a to select the appropriate maintenance personnel program 8b.
Is executed, the appropriate maintenance staff to be contacted is selected by referring to the response column 53 of the maintenance staff information table 5 described later, and the call response management program 8c is executed by the MPU 3a. The content of the abnormal code sent from the server is converted into a message, the content of the information processing system 1 to be monitored is also converted into a message, and an emergency call message is added to these to generate a message, and the selected maintenance personnel are selected. The telephone number and the telephone number are passed to the fault contact device 6 for telephone contact processing. Further, the fault monitoring device 2 refers to the response column of the maintenance personnel information table 5 when it receives the maintenance personnel code and the response signal from the fault communication device 6 while waiting by executing the call response management program 8c. When other maintenance personnel have made arrangements for the maintenance personnel who did not respond, a notification process to that effect is performed.

The fault communication device 6 has a modem 6 built therein, and pagers 91, 92, 93, ... 9 possessed by maintenance personnel according to the telephone number passed from the monitor control means 3.
One of n is called by calling through the public line network 9 and the message of the previous term is transmitted. Further, when a predetermined response is received from the maintenance staff through the telephone line, the response signal for the response is sent to the monitor control means 3. Also,
In addition to this, when there is a telephone call from the maintenance staff, a response signal and the code of the maintenance staff having the telephone communication sent from the maintenance staff side are sent to the monitoring control means 3. The fault communication device 6 may be realized as a program capable of executing the main processing of the MPU 3a, like the above-mentioned program.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the maintenance personnel information table 5, in which each maintenance personnel code column 51 and maintenance code column 52 to which a flag is set corresponding to each maintenance personnel code are provided.
Then, the response field 53, the telephone number field 54, and the failure target field 55
Are provided. The contents of the maintenance code column 52 are the power source control column 52a indicating the power source / control relation, the mechanism column 52b corresponding to the mechanism relation, and the device column 52 corresponding to the entire device.
c, an other column 52d for other maintenance, an initial column 52e corresponding to a maintenance beginner, and an operation column 52f related to operation management are provided. ○ in each column
Indicates that the flag “1” is set,
Each maintenance person is flagged to indicate that he / she has the ability to maintain the content. On the other hand, the flag “1” in the response field 53
"1" indicates that the user has contacted and received a response, flag "01" indicates that the user has contacted and did not respond, and flag "00" indicates that the user has not yet contacted. ,
The identification code of the corresponding system in which the failure has occurred is stored in the failure target field 55.

By the way, as described above, the MPU 3
The determination result obtained by executing the failure content determination program 8a by a corresponds to one of the maintenance code columns 52. When the maintenance code is stored in a predetermined area of the memory 3b, the appropriate maintenance personnel selection program 8b is executed by the MPU 3a with reference to this, and the telephone number of the maintenance personnel to be contacted is extracted. The fault notification processing by the proper maintenance staff selection program 8b and the call response management program 8c will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. 3. First, the proper maintenance staff selection program 8b is executed according to the maintenance code of the memory 3b, and the maintenance staff information table 5 is displayed.
In the maintenance code column 52 of, for example, the mechanism system column 52b corresponding to the mechanical relationship is referred to. As a maintainer who can respond ○
The flag in the response field 53 of the first maintenance person a in the field of "00" is "00"
Is confirmed and the telephone number is read (step 200), the call response management program 8c is executed to generate a message, and these are passed to the transmission failure contact device 6 to connect the telephone line to the maintenance person. Utilizing the information, contact is made (step 201), and then the time monitoring device 7 (timer) is started (step 202).

Next, it is judged whether or not there is a response from the maintenance staff (step 203), and when there is no response (NO).
(If No), it is determined whether or not there is an interrupt for ending the monitoring time (step 204). If not (NO), the process returns to step 203. In this loop, when the monitoring time ends in step 204 (YES), the flag of no response is set to “01” in the response field 53.
(Step 205), return to Step 200, read that the telephone number is read after confirming that the flag in the response field 53 of the maintenance person b with the next circle is "00",
The previous message is added (step 201) and the same processing as the above from step 201 to step 204 is performed. In step 201, when the flag in the response field 53 of the referenced maintenance personnel code is other than "00", the next maintenance personnel field with a circle is referenced.

If there is a response from the maintenance personnel in the determination at step 203, the response flag of the maintenance personnel's response field 53 is set to "11", the maintenance personnel is already assigned, and a failure has occurred. The identification code of the target system is stored in the failure target column 55 (step 206). As a result, it is possible to know which fault system this maintenance person is performing.

Then, referring to the mechanical system column 52b,
Refer to the flag in the response column 53 for the column marked with "0
It is determined whether or not there is "1" (step 207). Here, if there is "01" (when YES), it enters a standby state to wait for a response from a maintenance staff who does not respond even if he / she contacts. That is, next, a response waiting loop for whether or not there is a response from the maintenance personnel is entered (step 208), and when the maintenance personnel code and response signal are received from the fault communication device 6 in response to the telephone contact of the maintenance personnel. , The flag of the response column 53 corresponding to the maintenance worker code on the table 5 is referred from the maintenance worker code (step 209), and it is determined whether or not this is "01", and when it is "01". (Step 210)
A message already prepared by the maintenance staff is created, and this message is passed to the failure communication device 6 to notify the maintenance staff (step 211), and the response flag is returned to "00" (step 212). Then, the process returns to step 207. Even when the determination in step 210 is not “01”, the process returns to step 207.

If "01" does not exist in step 207 (NO), the process is terminated. In this way, appropriate maintenance personnel can be arranged for the faulty system in a short time. When the faulty system is restored and maintenance is completed, the response flag in the response field 53 of the maintenance personnel code is returned to "00" in response to the notification from the maintenance personnel.

As described above, the previous step 210
In the above, not only the contact of the arranged maintenance staff but also the code of the arranged maintenance staff or the name of the arranged maintenance staff and the name may be added to give a message. Further, at this time, referring to the maintenance staff information table 5, a process is added to automatically make a telephone call of arranged maintenance to all the maintenance staff whose response flag column is "01". Good. In the embodiment, the contact object of the failure contact device is a pager,
Other communication means such as a mobile phone may be used. Further, the response from the maintenance personnel can be provided in advance in the failure contact device so that the contact from the general public telephone can be answered.
Further, in the embodiment, the unmanned system is not particularly taken as an example, but by setting various contents in the maintenance code column 52 in accordance with the unmanned system, the present invention goes beyond the maintenance of the failure to operate the unmanned system. It can be applied to management.

[0020]

According to the present invention, maintenance personnel are sequentially stored in the storage table in advance, and the next maintenance personnel is called when there is no response. Is shortened. Furthermore, when there is a response from the maintenance staff who cannot be contacted, the dealt with automatically is dealt with automatically. As a result, the maintenance staff will be duplicated 1
No more going to one obstacle. Further, if the maintenance personnel stored in the above-mentioned storage table are managed according to the failure content in accordance with the maintenance content and the maintenance level, the appropriate maintenance personnel can be appropriately selected to deal with the failure system. Maintenance personnel can be arranged and the recovery time can be shortened.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment to which a fault notification system of the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of the abnormal state memory.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of a process of generating a failure content code.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a maintenance staff information table.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a fault notification process.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Information processing system, 1a ... Abnormality detection apparatus, 1b ... Communication control apparatus, 1c ... Abnormal state data memory, 2 ... Fault monitoring apparatus, 3 ... Monitoring control means, 3a ... MPU, 3b ... Memory, 5 ... Maintenance personnel information Table, 6 ... Fault contact device, 7 ...
Time monitoring device, 8a ... Fault content determination program, 8b ...
Appropriate maintenance personnel selection program, 8c ... call response management program, 10 ... connection line.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A storage table in which identification information of maintenance personnel, telephone call information for the maintenance personnel, and presence / absence of a response from the maintenance personnel are associated with each other and sequentially stored for a plurality of maintenance personnel, and by telephone. A time monitoring means for monitoring a response of the called maintenance person for a predetermined time, and a telephone line is called to one of the maintenance personnel according to the calling information by referring to the storage table. When the time monitoring means is operated and there is no response from the maintenance staff within the monitoring time, a response is sent from either the calling means for contacting the next maintenance staff on the storage table or the called maintenance staff. When there is a response, refer to the column of presence or absence of response of the storage table, and when there is a response, contact the maintenance person who responded with no response and do not respond. Failure notification system and a response management unit which storage of there in response to the storage position of the presence or absence of a response of said for the maintenance personnel at the time. 2. The storage table correlates the identification information of a plurality of maintenance personnel who can deal with the failure content with the failure content, call information by telephone to the maintenance staff, and information on whether or not the maintenance staff responds. Remembered,
When information corresponding to the content of the failure is transmitted from the failure monitoring target, the calling information of one of the maintenance personnel is selected according to this information, and the maintenance personnel is called, and there is no response from the maintenance personnel. 2. The fault notification system according to claim 1, wherein the next maintenance engineer makes the call according to the call information of the next maintenance engineer in a predetermined order.