The Campbell Soup Company
he Campbell Soup Company
has a widely-installed expert system that is used in its automated canneries
worldwide. The shelves of chunky chicken soup are all partly the products of
computerized artificial intelligence. This expert system doesn't screen for
'artificial' ingredients, rather, it diagnoses problems that occur with a vital component
of a soup canning factory know as the hydrostatic sterilizer(basically the cooker system).
Sure, Campbell's plant personnel can generally deal with the day-to-day operation of
the cookers, including routine problems that develop. Occasionally, serious problems arise
that require the services of an expert who understands the gritty details of the design,
installation, and operation of the hydrostatic sterilizer. If this sterilizer is not
working, bacteria will eat through the cans and plant operations would be seriously
disrupted. Iif the problem cannot be solved in a few minutes, it may be
necessary to throw away many thousands of cans of food.
Unfortunately, there are few human experts that understand the cooker systems well
enough to handle any problem that may arise. Campbell Soup relied primarily one
individual, Aldo Cimino(who had 45 years of experience), to deal with the toughest
problems. Sometimes, a hydrostatic sterilizer had to be shut down until Mr. Cimino could
be flown to a particular plant to work on this problem. Obviously, this presented an
opportunity for an expert system, programmed with the correct information, to work its way
into Campbell's factories.
Although programming an expert system to
replicate the work of Aldo Cimino seemed near impossible due to the amount of knowledge
and intuition he has gained through 45 years of experience, the power of artificial
forever changed the way things were done at Campbell. The company worked with
employees from Texas Instrument's Industrial Systems Division and Corporate Engineering
Center to develop a system that could diagnose cooker problems. It was developed
using TI's Personal Consultant product on the TI Professional Computer. The
diagnostic system, with 150 heuristical rules built
in, was completed in several months, and then tested in select factories for seven months
until it was finally implemented in all of Campbell's canneries a year later. It
took roughly two years to develop and implement this expert system that could be mass
produced, compared with the decades of experience that a single man needs to do the same
task. Now, plant operators and personnel can quickly diagnose a problem with the cooker
using this diagnostic expert system, thus eliminating costly cooker downtime. Also,
experts like Aldo Cimino are free to pursue more productive pursuits, such as improving
cooker designs so they will be more reliable and durable.(Edmunds
350)
