An Intelligent Chatbot Based on Hybrid Approach Implementing Technical Knowledge to Support Maintenance and Training Activities at Electricity of France (EDF)
Abstract
From a practical point of view, Knowledge Management (KM) is both a mix of well-established corporate procedures and an emerging field of academic research. The opposition might be strong between these different points of view. To go a step forward, we had a pragmatic approach (Lorino 2016; Thievenaz 2019), including theory and practice, engineers, and academics. We will see how an innovation can germinate at low noise level, with a classical KM problem: experts are retiring soon, how could we “transfer” their experience?Therefore, we followed a Data Sliming methodology (Kayakutlu & Mercier-Laurent 2016), combining Technical Expertise and Contextual Data. In this paper, we focus on an air conditioner: how and where to install it? The discussions in the team (made up of engineers, technicians, and schematic designers, then computer scientists and, to a lesser extent, academics) set up an innovation: a “conversationalist”, i.e., a chatbot whose dialog is that of an expert.In the first part, we will present the air conditioner problem and the problem of semantic shift. In power plants, “long term Knowledge” (Dourgnon; Mercier-Laurent; Roche 2005) has been alive for decades! In the second part, we will see how the team built “design sheets” for the air conditioner. We will follow the discussions and see how we made a living chatbot.This innovation was made possible by a favourable environment, with the help of the Open Innovation Team, and has been hailed as such.