Interactive feature extraction for diagnostic trouble codes in predictive maintenance

Abstract

Predicting future maintenance needs of equipment can be addressed in a variety of ways. Methods based on machine learning approaches provide an interesting platform for mining large data sets to find patterns that might correlate with a given fault. In this paper, we approach predictive maintenance as a classification problem and use Random Forest to separate data readouts within a particular time window into those corresponding to faulty and non-faulty component categories. We utilize diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) as an example of event-based data, and propose four categories of features that can be derived from DTCs as a predictive maintenance framework. We test the approach using large-scale data from a fleet of heavy duty trucks, and show that DTCs can be used within our framework as indicators of imminent failures in different components.